A major challenge to promoting effective early science and engineering education is the lack of reliable and validated assessments that align with current educational guidelines for science and engineering. Existing early science and engineering assessments either cover a narrow range of concepts and practices and/or are not designed in a way to…

Computerized assessments and digital games have become more prevalent in childhood, necessitating a systematic investigation of the effects of gamified executive function assessments on performance and engagement. This study examined the feasibility of incorporating gamification and a machine learning algorithm that adapts task difficulty to…

Preschool educators are linguistic models for their students. They prompt students to speak. Educators who are able to understand the critical nature of their role in the students' oracy development and to deliberately encourage conversation may have a profound impact on preschoolers who may be at risk. Oracy is self-expression prompted by…

Preschool experience plays a role in children's development. However, for programs with language and early literacy goals, the question remains whether preschool instructional experiences are sufficiently effective to achieve these goals for all children. In a multisite study, the authors conducted a process-product description of preschool…

The present study assessed the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, Second Edition (KABC-II) in relation to the synthesized Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of intelligence with a preschool sample. Participants were 200 preschool children between four and five years of age. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted, and different…

Children in the researcher's rural school district have limited opportunities for a high quality preschool programming that prepares them for school readiness. Quality preschool programming is defined as teachers with proper qualifications and training, small class size, stimulating curriculum, and parent involvement. The theoretical foundation…

This report provides a portrait of children entering Head Start for the first time in fall 2009, as well as of their family backgrounds and the classrooms and programs that serve them. The report also offers comparisons across the past decade of the Head Start program to delineate trends and changes in the population served and the services…

For each of the six age groups comprising the complete standardization sample reported in the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) manual, the matrix of intercorrelations among the subtests was separately factor analyzed. Results suggest that the Perceptual Organization factor of the WPPSI may be a valid measure of Witkin's…

Reviews CIRCUS, a comprehensive battery of assessment devices designed for use in nursey schools and kindergartens to diagnose the instructional needs of individual children and evaluate educational programs. (EVH)

Describes the four major instruments now in use in the study of the creative ability of young children. (Atuhor)

The Starkweather Social Relations Test is designed to measure a young child's social value within his own peer group. It is more than a test of popularity. It combines a picture interview technique with gift-giving, and each child's value in his group is measured in terms of the extent to which his gift-giving is reciprocated by the children whom…

Curriculum-based assessment (CBA) provides the most direct means for assessing and monitoring child program progress. Five areas of research in preschool assessment and four major qualities for assessment batteries are summarized. The interrelatedness of direct instruction, behavior technology, program accountability, and curriculum-based…

Anomalies in colour vision constitute a particular type of sensory deficiency whose influence in educational contexts has attracted surprisingly little research attention given its ubiquitous use in various learning activities as a code, an aid, or even as the focus of the activity itself, especially during early education. We here describe a…

The integration of neuropsychological (NP) methods into the comprehensive assessment of preschool children is examined. It is concluded that NP assessment serves as a powerful tool for individual case planning only when used in combination with information gathered in other settings. (Author/LMO)