Measuring the quality of classroom-based interactive shared book reading within the early childhood classroom represents a specific dimension of teacher-child interactions that is of great interest to researchers. This interest reflects decades of research demonstrating the benefit of reading to young children in both the home and the classroom.…

Teacher professional standards are a mechanism to safeguard quality teaching. In the context of Chinese early childhood education (ECE), this study developed a scale for self-assessing teacher competence against professional standards. The study adopted a three-phase design. In Phase 1, in accordance with Professional Standards for Kindergarten…

The present study aimed to demonstrate how the mixed methods approach was used to develop and validate a quantitative instrument for measuring forms of capital (a "Capital Scale") among K-12 teachers, using the two-phase approach of an exploratory sequential model. The study includes: (1) a qualitative phase based on 16 semi-structured…

The present study aimed to develop and validate a questionnaire assessing parents' beliefs about, and attitudes toward, supporting young children's English as a second/foreign language development -- Parent English Language Belief and Attitude Questionnaire (PELBA-Q). The PELBA-Q was piloted with 173 parents of kindergarten-aged children and…

Children's development during early childhood affects their well-being and educational success, but there are few reliable assessment instruments available. The aim of the study was to develop, pilot and validate an e-assessment instrument for assessing five-year-old children's development in cognitive processes, learning, language and…

Research Findings: This study provides psychometric validation of the Classroom Engagement Scale (CES), a 14-item, teacher-report, formative assessment of behavioral engagement. It is currently used for all kindergarten children in a large, urban school district where it is embedded in the report card. Multi-level factor analysis revealed two…

Coding ability has become an essential digital skill for young children. The graphical programming environment is valuable carrier for cultivating children's coding ability. The purpose of this study is to develop a coding ability test for children, to conduct a graphic coding intervention, and to further explore the impact of multiple factors on…

This study examined the structure of the Best Start Kindergarten Assessment (Best Start) of literacy and numeracy, with the aim of confirming a two-factor measure of attainment at school entry comparable in structure to standardised measures of literacy and numeracy administered in later school years. Administrative data from the 2009 Best Start…

The New Mexico Public Education Department developed the Kindergarten Observation Tool (KOT) as a multidimensional observational measure of students' knowledge and skills at kindergarten entry. The primary purpose of the KOT is to inform instruction, so that kindergarten teachers can use the information about their students' knowledge and skills…

Taiwan government consolidated the kindergarten and daycare systems in 2012, and launched a new national curriculum framework, Early Childhood Education & Care Curriculum Framework (ECECCF), as a guidance for quality early childhood education programs. Research has shown that the effects of a new educational program highly depended on the…

This study investigated the measurement of social emotional competence in low-income youth by assessing the validity of responses derived from the widely used, teacher-rated Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA). Based on the five-component social emotional learning model proposed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional…

This study assessed the psychometric properties of a digital early mathematics assessment, the Ani Banani Math Test (ABMT) in three samples (N[subscript 1] = 243, N[subscript 2] = 691, N[subscript 3] = 1282) in kindergarten and first grade (age range 4.67-7.30). Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the ABMT appears to measure one general…

The early childhood sector in Singapore has witnessed vast changes in the past two decades. One of the key policy aims is to improve classroom quality. To ensure a rigorous evaluation of the quality of early childhood environments in Singapore, it is important to determine whether commonly used assessments of quality are valid indicators across…

This study validated a parent-report measure of the Parenting and Family Adjustment Scales in a Chinese cultural context through investigating 650 Chinese parents. The results provided evidence for satisfactory reliability and validity of Parenting and Family Adjustment Scales in a Chinese context, which is thus promising to be used for Chinese…

There is a significant need for kindergarten entry assessments (KEA) that meet state education agency (SEA) requirements and are psychometrically sound measures of a broad range of school readiness domains such as language, literacy, math, science, executive function, and social-emotional skills. Research Findings: In this paper, we describe five…