Constrained or sustained by demands?:Perceptions of professional autonomy in early childhood education

Early childhood teachers worldwide feel that their ability to act according to their professional knowledge and values is constrained. This sense of constraint is commonly attributed to the pressures of accountability policies, aimed at ensuring and improving educational quality. By law, Dutch schools are free to choose how they design their teaching practices. Nevertheless, efforts by the government to control daily teaching practices are encountered in Dutch schools. The generally recognized importance of teachers’ professional autonomy led the authors to conduct an in-depth study on this topic in Dutch early childhood education. They interviewed experienced early childhood teachers in open one-on-one interviews to explore their lived realities. The findings contribute to the discourse on three topics: first, the generally felt forces of accountability stemming from a variety of actors in the school environment; second, the impact of these forces on daily education practice, as well as on teachers’ emotions; and third, the role of the head teacher, who appears to be able to either enforce or inhibit these impacts. The results of the study show that where external forms of regulation and accountability measures are passed on by the head teacher, the negative emotional impact of the pressures is high. For head teachers, however, operating in a position between multiple fields of professional influence also seems to offer opportunities for maintaining a healthy balance between regulation and freedom

Defining and evaluating stability in early years assessment

Stability is an important underlying assumption in any form of assessment-supported decision-making. Since early years development is frequently described as unstable, the concept plays a central role in the discussion surrounding early years assessment. This paper describes stability as a set of assumptions about the way individual scores change over time. Here, an analytical framework developed by Tisak and Meredith (1990), which can be used to evaluate these assumptions, is extended and applied to evaluate the stability of mathematics scores of 1402 children between kindergarten and third grade. Multilevel models are used to evaluate the assumption that each child has a unique individual growth rate, as well as the assumption that the ranking of children’s test scores is consistent over time. The results show that for a large proportion of the children, assuming unique individual growth rates leads to similar predictions as assuming that children develop at an equal pace. While individual differences in growth rate may provide relevant information, these differences only become apparent after several test administrations. As such, decisions should not be based on perceived stagnated or accelerated growth over a short period

Validation of a developmental checklist for young (0-5) Surinamese children

Vroege interventie is van groot belang voor kinderen met ontwikkelingsproblemen. Voor een effectieve interventie is het belangrijk dat deze interventie goed aansluit bij de ontwikkeling van een kind. Voor lage inkomenslanden, zoals Suriname, is dit een probleem, omdat de gebruikte interventiemethoden vaak ontwikkeld zijn in hoge inkomenslanden en niet volledig aansluiten bij de ecologische situatie in lage inkomenslanden en om die redenen minder valide zijn. Dit onderzoek richt zich op het aanpassen en valideren van een ontwikkelingsvaardighedenlijst, welke onderdeel is van een vroege interventie programma. Deze vaardighedenlijsten betreffen zes verschillende ontwikkelingsdomeinen, te weten cognitie, motoriek, sociale vaardigheden, zelfredzaamheid, taalbegrip en taalproductie. In totaal hebben 485 verzorgers van kinderen (in de leeftijd van 0 tot en met 5 jaar) samen met een onderzoeker de ontwikkelingsvaardighedenlijsten ingevuld. De vaardighedenlijsten bleken over het algemeen betrouwbaar te zijn voor Suriname, maar enkele vaardigheden sloten niet aan bij het Surinaamse kind. Om die reden moest de volgorde van de items in de vaardighedenlijst aangepast worden om beter aan te sluiten bij de Surinaamse ontwikkeling. De resultaten van het onderzoek bevestigen dat meetinstrumenten en interventies om afstemming vragen aan de socioculturele omstandigheden van een land en/of doelgroep.For children with developmental problems Early Intervention is of eminent importance. For an intervention to be effective, it is important to match the development of a child. This is a problem for low income countries, like Suriname, because the used intervention methods are often developed in high income countries. These methods don’t fit the ecological situations of low income countries, and for that reason are less valid methods. This research focusses on the adaptation and validation of a developmental skill list, which is part of an early intervention program. The developmental skill lists contain six different domains, namely: cognition, motor, social, selfcare, language production and language comprehension. In total 485 caretakers of young children between the ages of 0 till 5, filled out the lists with help of a researcher. The developmental lists in general were valid for Surinamese children, but some skills didn’t fit the Surinamese child. For that reason the order of the items had to be rearranged to better fit the Surinamese development. The results of this research confirm that tests and interventions need to be adapted to the sociocultural aspects of a country or target group