Teacher preparation programs are increasingly expected to use data on preservice teacher (PST) skills to drive program improvement and provide targeted supports. Observational ratings are especially vital, but also prone to measurement issues. Scores may be influenced by factors unrelated to PSTs' instructional skills, including rater standards.…

The CLASS-PreK instrument is widely used to evaluate early childhood classrooms, but how classrooms using Montessori, the world's most common alternative education system, fare on CLASS is understudied. Because CLASS focuses largely on teacher-child interactions as the situs of learning, but in Montessori theory, child-environment interactions are…

A growing number of toddlers are attending childcare institutions as part of China's establishment of its infant-toddler childcare service system. However, there is limited empirical evidence available regarding the quality of these childcare services. The purpose of this study is to investigate the quality of teacher - child interactions in…

Research Findings: The quality of teacher-child interaction is a principal driver of children's development of pre-literacy skills. Yet previous findings regarding the associations between teacher-child interaction quality as measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and children's pre-literacy skills have been inconclusive. This…

Evidence indicates that children's personalities shape their interactions and relationships with others. This study aims to identify the relationship between child personality types and interaction quality in preschools, which is of high predictive importance for the development of children's competencies. Interaction quality was determined using…

Teaching is a stressful profession given teachers' competing demands. Due to COVID-19, teachers struggle to balance maintaining a safe classroom environment and the traditional child-directed focus of early education. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of an adaptation of Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation…

This brief provides a systemwide look at early childhood teacher turnover using data from all publicly funded, center-based early childhood programs in Louisiana, including subsidized child care, Head Start, and pre-kindergarten. It provides new evidence on the prevalence of turnover and explores whether teachers who leave differ from those who…

Research Findings: This study employed multiple approaches to examine the stability of teacher--child interaction quality in Chinese preschools. Teacher-child interaction quality was measured using the "Classroom Assessment Scoring System" (CLASS) on five observational cycles within a school day. Several different metrics of stability…

Research Findings: The Classroom Assessment Scoring System Toddler (CLASS-T) is one of the most commonly used measures to assess the quality of teacher-child interactions in toddler classrooms. Despite widespread use of the CLASS-T, few studies have examined the factor structure of the CLASS-T for use in Early Head Start (EHS) and subsidized child…

Purpose and Method of Study: The purpose of this nonexperimental quantitative study was to determine the level of teacher self-efficacy and the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) ratings among CAP Tulsa teachers. Descriptive analysis was utilized to identify the level of teacher self-efficacy…

The "Pre-K Classroom Assessment Scoring System" (CLASS) is commonly used to measure three domains of teacher-child interactional quality in preschool classrooms (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support). However, there is considerable debate regarding the validity of its three-domain factor structure and the…

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta et al., 2008) is a popular measure of teacher-child interactions. Despite its prominence, CLASS scores have fairly weak relations with various child outcomes (e.g., Zaslow et al., 2010). One potential reason for these findings could be systematic differences in observer severity. As such, the…

This study examined the extent to which the quality of teacher-infant interactions varies across play and routine care activities. In addition, the effects of the quantity of adult involvement in the quality of teacher-infant interactions were investigated. Participants were teachers and infants from 90 infant classrooms in Portugal. Classrooms…

This cross-national study involved 56 toddler classrooms in Poland and the Netherlands. A cluster analysis was conducted to identify classroom profiles based on observed quality and these were compared regarding structural (group size and children-to-teacher ratio) and curriculum (e.g. pre-academics and pretend play) characteristics. In total, 224…

The use of the Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) to improve early childhood education program quality is based in part on assumptions that the quality of programs can be measured and that quality ratings are associated with meaningful differences in learning outcomes for children. This report reviews all of the state QRIS validation…