Effects of Classroom Practices and School Context

描述（由申请人提供）：1987年由全国幼儿教育协会提出的发展适当实践（DAP）指南已在幼儿教育培训项目中广泛教授，并在小学课堂上实施。DAP标准对数百万儿童的课堂体验产生了重大影响。提出的研究建立在以前的工作检查DAP的测量和DAP对学业成绩的影响。本研究的目的有三个：1)考察DAP对社会技能和问题行为发展轨迹的影响；2)研究学校环境对教师使用DAP的影响程度；3)考察学校环境和DAP对学业成就和社交技能轨迹的综合影响。本研究解决了早期研究的方法局限性，使用适合数据集嵌套性质的多层次分析和具有强心理测量特性的DAP的观察者测量。本研究中提出的分析利用了一个现有的数据集，其中包括来自4000多名前“领先计划”儿童及其同龄人的纵向数据。数据是在美国30个州收集的，包括不同的种族构成。与其他评估DAP效果的研究一样，结果受到以下事实的限制：仅包括在课堂上定期进行的DAP的那些方面。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) guidelines proposed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children in 1987 have been widely taught in training programs for early childhood education and implemented in elementary school classrooms. The DAP standards have had a significant impact on the classroom experiences of millions of children. The proposed research builds on previous work examining the measurement of DAP and the effects of DAP on academic achievement. This research has three aims: 1) to examine the effects of DAP on the developmental trajectory of social skills and problem behavior; 2) to study the extent to which the school context relates to teacher use of DAP; and 3) to examine the combined effects of school context and DAP on trajectories of academic achievement and social skills. This study addresses methodological limitations of earlier research, using multilevel analyses appropriate to the nested nature of the data set and an observer measure of DAP with strong psychometric properties. The analyses proposed in this study make use of an existing data set that includes longitudinal data from over 4,000 former Head Start children and their peers. Data were collected in 30 states around the US including a diverse ethnic makeup. As in other studies evaluating the effects of DAP, results are limited by the fact that only those aspects of DAP that take place in the classroom on a regular basis are included.