Research increasingly acknowledges the importance of high quality interactions that support and extend children's thinking. Few measurement tools currently exist, however, to capture this specific aspect of process quality. The Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Wellbeing (SSTEW) scale was developed to assess interactional quality in early…

The first aim of this study is to examine the validity and reliability of the Children's Playfulness Scale (CPS), which was developed to determine pre-school children's disposition towards play. The second aim is to test the effects of some variables on playfulness and whether such variables affect playfulness levels of children. About 196…

The purpose of this study was to report preliminary reliability and validity data from the Conversation Compass© Communication Screener (CCCS), a teacher-reported language screener intended to capture children's skills related to classroom conversations with peers and teachers. Three preschool teachers completed the CCCS and the Child Observation…

Background: In order to identify Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) as soon as possible, we need validated screening instruments that can be used for the early identification of motor coordination delays. The aim of this study was to establish the suitability of the Little Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (Little DCDQ) for…

Literature reveals that there are very few validated motor proficiency tests for young children. According to Gallahue and Ozmun, the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency is a valid test. However, manipulative skills, which are classified as gross motor skills by most motor development specialists, are only tested in the Upper Limb…

Against the backdrop of growing international concern for a narrowing view of early literacy, this study was initiated to determine how teachers of four-year-olds view their task of fostering early literacy. This paper reports on the first steps to design and validate an instrument which captures teachers' perceptions of early literacy content…

Play is a primary context for fostering young children's positive peer interactions. Through play, children develop the social, emotional, cognitive and language skills that contribute to the ability to establish effective relationships with peers. The Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS) was first developed by Fantuzzo to assess the quality…

There is a need for more comprehensive assessments of young children's emerging print knowledge. Traditional letter and numeral identification assessments score children's responses as either correct or incorrect and this approach can underestimate what children know. The present study tested an assessment scale that scored three- and…

The aim of this study was to test reliabilities and validations for the Arabic translation of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Revised (ECERS-R) scale [Harms, T., Clifford, R. M., & Cryer, D. (1998). "Early childhood environment rating scale, revised edition." New York: Teachers College Press]. ECERS-R mean scores were…

The purpose of this study was to examine the concurrent validity of the assessment for an early language and literacy project. The goal of the project was to promote a successful transition to kindergarten for preschoolers who were at risk for reading difficulties by equipping them with the necessary language and literacy skills needed for early…

This study aimed to establish the validity of the Language Development Rating Scale and the Attitudes toward Reading and Voluntary Reading Behaviour Rating Scale in Morrow's Checklist for Assessing Early Literacy Development for use with preschool children in Hong Kong. The sample comprised 2619 preschool children aged three-five years who were…

Although previous research has explored the effects of various environmental influences on young children's play, the influence of toys has rarely been examined. This paucity of toy studies is due to a lack of a scientifically constructed observation system to evaluate the impact of play materials across developmental domains. The purpose of this…

"A_Tempo" is a research project that is currently under development in Galicia, an autonomous community of Spain. Its main aim is to propose an effective universal screening procedure for early identification of developmental disorders in children from zero to three years of age who attend Galician pre-primary schools.…

This study evaluated a data-set drawn using "The Familia"--a measure originally developed to evaluate shared-reading activities. A newly developed set of conceptual supports and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were applied to a new factor structure/model. Data were drawn from 219 young children and their families (mean age = 43…

This study aimed to develop a new scale, the "Supports Scale For Preschool Inclusion" (SSPI), to assess preschool teachers perceptions of necessary factors and availability of supports for a successful inclusion in pre-school educational settings. Pre-school teachers ("n" = 183, mean age = 32.81, standard deviation = 8.29) from…