The present research evaluated whether behavioral tasks ("direct assessments") commonly used to assess young children's social cognitive development in laboratory studies could have utility for measuring and predicting U.S. children's outcomes in educational contexts. To do so, children (N = 95; 49 boys, 46 girls; 41.05% White, 16.84%…

Background: Kindergartens and other preschool facilities provide preschool children with an important setting for social interactions. Social interaction supports the development of social skills in children and is associated with better subsequent performance in arithmetic. Objective: This study reviewed the literature to; (a) identify targets…

This article describes the development and administration of the "Kindergarten-Second Grade (K-2) Writing Data-Based Decision Making (DBDM) Survey." The "K-2 Writing DBDM Survey" was developed to learn more about current DBDM practices specific to early writing. A total of 376 educational professionals (175 general education…

This article focuses on the results of an investigation about the "traffic light" method in kindergarten, which is used as a self-assessment method, a strategy by which the preschoolers evaluate their own progress in achieving the learning objectives, and the teacher obtains an immediate feedback regarding the level of understanding of…

Background: Teachers' perspectives provide crucial insights into classroom practice in early childhood education settings. Although many kindergarten programmes emphasise play "and" assessment to support children's learning and development, recent research suggests that there are some disparities between teachers' articulated role of…

Purpose: In the current age of greater digital delivery of services, it is important to examine the validity and differences between spoken and digital delivery of materials. The current study is a practice-based research partnership between school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and researchers, evaluating presentation effects and…

Argumentation, a key scientific practice presented in the "Framework for K-12 Science Education," requires students to construct and critique arguments, but timely evaluation of arguments in large-scale classrooms is challenging. Recent work has shown the potential of automated scoring systems for open response assessments, leveraging…

Along with standards describing what music students should be able to do, the National Core Arts Standards developed Model Cornerstone Assessments suggesting how teachers can measure student learning for each artistic process. This article explores the Respond Model Cornerstone Assessment. This column explains the Model Cornerstone Assessment for…

This study proposes a two-stage causal modeling with instrumental variables to mitigate selection bias, provide correct standard error estimates, and address nonnormal and missing data issues simultaneously. Bayesian methods are used for model estimation. Robust methods with Student's "t" distributions are used to account for nonnormal…

Motivation impacts student academic performance. A performance task to directly assess writing motivation in young children is needed. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the validity of the Writing Challenge Task (WCT), a task-oriented assessment created to measure writing motivation with 106 kindergarten students in the rural…

This ethnographic study examines kindergarten teachers' perceptions and practices of "school readiness" in kindergartens in low-SES settings in northern Israel, with the aim of illuminating the ways in which global educational ideas are appropriated by teachers in their daily work. Data collection included participant observation,…

The teaching and learning of design technology that occurs in nature-based early childhood education and care (ECEC) contexts such as nature kindergartens remains under-theorised. There is a growing body of scholarship that describes how teaching and learning occurs in these contexts as well as highlighting the benefits for young children learning…

In 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued "Guidelines for Preschool Education (GPE) (trial version)" to call on early childhood practitioners to use a child-centred and play-based approach to teaching and learning. In order to implement the requirements, many kindergartens in China have carried out the play-based kindergarten…

This study was conducted to determine the most common contemporary evaluation methods used by kindergarten teachers to assess kindergarten children. The study sample consisted of 527 kindergarten teachers. A scale was developed in order to achieve the study's purposes. The results indicated that the Teacher's Practices in the Evaluation Process…

The study aims to identify how kindergarten teachers perform early literacy assessments in the classroom and the challenges these teachers have in performing such assessments. During the study, the data were gathered through an in-depth interview in the form of a forum group discussion (FGD). Then, the phenomenological data were attained from 30…