The Best for Babies: Expert Advice for Assessing Infant-Toddler Programs

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THE Best for Babies

Expert Advice for Assessing Infant-Toddler Programs

Alice Sterling Honig, PhD

Gryphon House, Inc.

Lewisville, NC

Copyright

©2014 Alice Sterling Honig

Published by Gryphon House, Inc.

P. O. Box 10, Lewisville, NC 27023

800.638.0928; 877.638.7576 (fax)

Visit us on the web at www.gryphonhouse.com.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or technical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the the United States. Every effort has been made to locate copyright and permission information.

Cover photograph courtesy of Shutterstock.com © 2014.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Honig, Alice S.

The best for babies : expert advice for assessing infant-toddler programs / Dr. Alice Sterling Honig.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-87659-554-1

1. Child care--United States. 2. Child development--United States. 3. Education, Preschool--United States. 4. Education, Preschool--Activity programs--United States. I. Title.

HQ778.63.H66 2014

362.70973--dc23

2014009466

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Disclaimer

Gryphon House, Inc., cannot be held responsible for damage, mishap, or injury incurred during the use of or because of activities in this book. Appropriate and reasonable caution and adult supervision of children involved in activities and corresponding to the age and capability of each child involved are recommended at all times. Do not leave children unattended at any time. Observe safety and caution at all times.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge with grateful appreciation all the loving care of perceptive and skilled caregivers and parents who have cherished little children over the years, whose interactions with the children have illuminated theoretical and research findings about developmentally appropriate practices in harmonious and vivid ways.

I thank with deep appreciation Editor-in-Chief Diane Ohanesian and the Gryphon House staff for their dedication and gracious support in making this book available for caregivers, parents, and directors.

I thank my children, Larry, Madeleine, and Jonathan, for the privilege of helping me learn through years of practice, through mistakes, and through positive interactions how to nourish each of them through the years and help them grow into the deeply committed and admirable parents they have been to my grown grandchildren.

Preface

Awareness of the importance of early education for children continues to grow not only among developed nations but also across the world. Quality early childhood education (ECE) is recognized increasingly as a pathway to help children grow out of lives of poverty, a route toward school success, and a helpful support for children on the journey toward later satisfaction in their professional and personal lives.

Tools for assessing quality programs mostly have been based on assessing outcomes for young children, such as knowledge of ABCs or overall readiness for kindergarten. Assessments may encompass a wide variety of programmatic aspects, including level of teacher education, cultural norms for child classroom behaviors, degree of child autonomy and choice of activity allowed, culturally accepted discipline techniques, and child-teacher ratios. Some assessments include ratings of the availability of printed program curricula; abundance of materials; toys and equipment; classroom ambience, such as lighting, wall coverings, and carpets; spatial arrangements; child gender ratios in the classroom; length of daily schedules; richness of teacher talk with children; and relationship of staff with families.

Many tools for assessing early childhood classrooms focus on structural variables; they predominantly emphasize child outcomes. And, indeed, research has shown the importance of some of the variables listed. For example, research on child-teacher ratios has revealed the vulnerability—as shown by their distressed behaviors—of male (but not female) children in group settings when there are more children per preschool teacher (Bornstein et al., 2006). Other research has revealed that a teacher who holds a four-year college degree in early childhood education is more likely to be identified among teachers who are rated as less authoritarian in their childrearing attitudes than caregivers with no training (Arnett, 1989). Teacher training has been undertaken to enrich language with children and thus enhance quality of child experiences in care. Teachers with training in how to extend and lengthen conversational exchanges with young children were observed immediately after training (although not several months later) to extend their conversations with children (Honig and Martin, 2009). Significantly, teacher preparation, skills, and empathy have been shown to be the primary factors in children’s positive outcomes after their preschool experiences. When such teacher skills are lacking, then poorer outcomes for children have been found. Caribbean researchers concluded that rural Guyanese children in classrooms with teachers who had high school qualifications did not seem prepared for primary school (Roopnarine, 2013).

A study of nearly three thousand children in 703 state-funded preschool classrooms in nine U.S. states concluded that two factors in particular proved to be the best predictors of child outcomes: The quality of teacher-child interactions consistently proved to be the strongest predictor of children’s learning, followed by the learning environment (Sabol et al., 2013). From a content analysis of more than seventy-six studies, La Paro et al. (2012) also emphasized that the depth of quality must be factored in when assessing classroom quality.

Difficulties may arise in trying to characterize center quality by overall quality-rating scales across classrooms. Such ratings may miss the essential differences in interaction quality among teachers with the children they serve—even among those teachers serving the same age groups in a facility. Capturing center-level quality based on average environmental rating scale scores could then fail to identify within-center quality differences in different classrooms. Identifying these in-classroom differences is necessary, for example, as directors and educational personnel in resource and referral agencies are planning programs to provide training for those teachers needing further enhancement of their knowledge and skills. Such identification could even be useful in identifying master teachers in a facility who could mentor new teachers or those needing wider practice in using positive styles and skills with young children or a deeper understanding of child development.

Given the critical importance of caregiver-child interactions in promoting cognitive, language, and social-emotional learning in young children, the care quality checklist items in this book focus strongly on the kind, quality, intensiveness, and extensiveness of the behaviors and interactions between a teacher or care provider and each child. The checklist provides a way to assess each interpersonal relationship—its quality in enhancing the learning and living experiences for young children. As a result, directors and teachers can consider the ratings as they identify ways to optimize the outcomes for each child.

Each of the checklist items has explanatory descriptive materials that can help each teacher focus even deeper on how to craft, creatively modify, and extend her interactions to meet the needs of each precious small person in her care. Examples and illustrative anecdotes clarify items to ensure that trainers and directors will find the checklist useful. The care quality checklist can be used to help teachers flourish and feel deepening pride in their professional expertise and careers as they continue to guide children’s learning and well-being.

Chapter 1:

The Importance of Quality Child Care

Loving, knowledgeable, and skilled caregivers provide the priceless ingredients for raising emotionally healthy children who will be enthusiastic learners and work hard to achieve their unique life goals. Given this kind of start in life, children are likely to grow into caring, concerned citizens who will, in turn, contribute to helping others grow up to become productive, creative, kind human beings. High-quality early care programs that emphasize regular staff training have been shown to yield impressive societal benefits:

lower percentages of school-age children who needed to repeat classes;

increased self-control;

lower adolescent delinquency rates;

less delinquency recidivism;

more total years of education, including more college education; and

more months per year as adult taxpaying workers.

In times of financial hardship, child care centers may face budget cuts that decrease the possibility of funds for extensive staff training or staff monitoring. George Morrison (2012), professor of early education and author of Racing to the Bottom, has grimly noted, some preschool programs, faced with increasing numbers of underemployed and out-of-work parents, cut their tuition, desperately trying to make their programs more affordable for the new generation of parents and families. These policies, of course, just accelerate the free fall into poor-quality programs.

Research findings on the positive effects of quality care are beginning to percolate through other parts of society beyond child care and educational constituencies and some state governments. The greater the involvement of many different constituencies among citizens who become aware of the benefits of quality early care, the more likely that legal and financial as well as professional educational supports for quality care can become available through legislative focus and action.

Defining Quality Care

How is quality in early childhood education and child care defined? Many of the key elements for providing excellent nurturing care and learning opportunities for young children have been confirmed in research and clinical studies:

Encouraging positive peer interactions in dramatic play

Expressive daily book reading

Galvanizing group projects

Rich oral-language interactions

Specific use of open-ended questions to promote thinking skills

Strategies to improve numerical understandings

Personal reflectivity

Encouraging mindfulness and self-regulation

Cognitive flexibility and sustained attention to tasks

Fostering friendships

Secure attachment

Home-visitation techniques to enhance family involvement and to build secure infant-parent attachment

Additionally, teachers need further skills and specific techniques for nurturing and working with children who have special needs or who have experienced early abuse or trauma.

Numerous rating scales and assessment instruments are available for monitoring child achievement and progress in a wide range of developmental areas. Many of these scales, checklists, and rating instruments are particularly useful to monitor child attainments in child care settings. However, instruments for assessing the quality of provider care and for assessing the effectiveness of caregiver training efforts are in far shorter supply.

The need for quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) is becoming recognized at federal levels. Recently, the Center for American Progress released a report titled Increasing the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Existing Public Investments in Early Childhood Education, which includes recommendations for the federal government to enhance the quality of child care. The report urges partnering with states to build assessments and assessment systems that demonstrate that standards are being met. The report further recommends that the federal government should help determine the optimal set of skills and information that caregivers need to know, to boost the efficacy of preparation programs for early childhood program staff. The report emphasizes the importance of implementing a consistent, state-of-the-art approach to high-quality professional development.

Finding ways to assess the quality of caregiving for young