|
On Friday, October 1, 1999, four nationally distinguished
early childhood scholars and 275 audience members convened at the
Wyndham Garden Hotel in Bloomington, Minnesota to discuss the
currently relevant topic of assessment and observation of young
children. The purpose of the gathering? The 18th
Minnesota Round Table –"Observation and Assessment of
Young Children: Issues in Research, Policy, and Practice."
The audience at this lively discussion was comprised of
University of Minnesota faculty and students as well as a myriad
of other local, community, state, and regional educators, service
providers, and leaders who share an interest in and involvement
with infants, young children and their families.
Sitting
at the Round Table
Marie E. Anzalone
Sc.D., OTR, Programs in Occupational Therapy, Neurological
Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Scott R. McConnell
Ph.D., Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education
and Human Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Kathryn E. Barnard
RN, Ph.D., Parent-Child Nursing, Psychology and the Center for
Child Development and Mental Retardation, University of
Washington, Seattle, WA
Samuel J. Meisels
Ed.D., School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
MI.
Richard A. Weinberg
Ph.D. (Moderator), Co-Director of the Irving B. Harris Training
Center for Infant and Toddler Development and Professor at the
Institute of Child Development, College of Education and Human
Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
The 1999 Minnesota Round Table was sponsored by the Center for
Early Education and Development (CEED) and co-sponsored by the
Irving B. Harris Training Center for Infant and Toddler
Development (University of Minnesota), The Maternal and Child
Health Program in the School of Public Health, (University of
Minnesota), and the Children, Youth and Family Consortium (CYFC,
University of Minnesota). The CEED Round Table has a long history
of providing a forum for scholars and practitioners alike to meet
and formally discuss the current trends of thought on a topic
relevant to early childhood development. As Dr. Weinberg noted in
his opening remarks, this partnership between "distinguished
educators, psychologists, sociologists, health care providers,
and other scholars" is extremely important, and there is a
vital need for such open discussion. Said Weinberg, "This
fruitful partnership affirms the importance of the need for
collaborative efforts to improve the lives of young children and
their families" by bringing together speakers of differing
backgrounds for a lively and fruitful discussion with questions
which serve as catalysts for generating dialogue and for creating
opportunities to clarify and challenge points of view. He noted
that CEED has a history of "building bridges between
research/scholarship and practice/policies that help shape the
lives of young children and their families" with a goal of
"sharing the vision of what is in the best interest of the
next generation" with the hope of influencing public policy.
The 1999 Round Table consisted of two discussions, a morning
discussion and an afternoon discussion, each followed by a
question-and-answer period, at which point audience members were
encouraged to become part of the conversation.
Presenter
Introductions
Scott McConnell
I was trained as a school psychologist. I am interested in
examining my roles as assessor vs. intervener in schools and am
interested in assessment and observation practices that support
the "intervention imperative" as an "obligation to
act." I prefer a "simple-minded" approach posing
such questions as: 1) What are the interactions that children
have with others that, in turn, promote their development? What
are their type and frequency? 2) What are the factors in their
lives or in their make-up that will affect their interactions
with others? 3) What are the practices that will produce better
outcomes for children and how can they be developed?
Kathryn Barnard
I have a nursing background and feel that my training as a
nurse has intrinsically supplied me with refined observation
skills. As a nurse, 70% of what one does are acts of observation.
The problem of naturalistic observation vs. systematic
(standardized) observation is overriding in nursing, as nurses
tend to rebel against systematic observation. I believe that
observation of the environment can supply many of the answers to
what might be influencing the child’s behavior or
symptomology.
Marie Anzalone
I am a clinician and a researcher, trained as an occupational
therapist. I pose the question, "What is typical?" for
children with disabilities such as autism, cerebral palsy, or
high-risk infants. In my work, I look at children within
different foci such as the health condition, the body, the
complex activities that they do, and then look at their ability
to participate in the environments, assessing how those physical
and social environments modify the expectations for the child and
the family. I am also concerned with how assessors may develop
usable techniques for evidence-based practice and intervention.
Sam Meisels
Assessment is a means, but by no means an end. The primary
goal of assessment is to answer specific questions about
children’s knowledge, skills, personality, and
accomplishments. Assessments should enable us to provide the most
optimal services to the largest number of children. In conducting
observational assessments, one first needs to ask: What do we
want to know about the child. Some questions that I would pose
are: How can we trust teachers’ judgments about
children’s performance, especially when these judgments are
made on observation assessments? Is it possible to develop an
assessment for the 0—3 population that will enhance
relationships instead of only documenting developmental
milestones? How can we draw together parents and baby and include
caregivers in the assessment process?
Discussion
Q: In thinking about observation, how do
you know what to observe? When do you use naturalistic
vs. systematic and naturalistic observation? What guides
you?
A: Sam Meisels
When I began to develop the Work Sampling System, the
first thing we did was to examine existing curriculum
standards. This is something we have in school age that
we do not have in early childhood. Standards need to be
set for preschool age children so we can know what to
expect from a child at a certain age.
A: Marie Anzalone
Our standards for 0—3 have to be contextually and
culturally driven, because what is meaningful to a family
of an infant is not universal. It is not something we can
set national, state or even city standards for. If we are
always being driven by the need to have standards, are we
saying we need to erase culture?
A: Kathryn Barnard
You need to study not only the infant, but the context
of the environment because the infant can be entirely
different in different contexts. I’m thinking of a
young child whose mother has PTSD. The baby is very
disorganized and, in the presence of her mother, her
motor function falls apart. But when the mother is not in
the room, her motor development is much more organized
and controlled. Babies do not exist in the world without
caregivers. How an infant functions is very dependent on
the meaning, the presence, and the interaction of that
care provider, so any observational schema has to take
that into account. A child I saw once in an attachment
situation, I was sure had cerebral palsy. But it turned
out that he didn’t.
A: Sam Meisels
In the case of that little boy, it was a relationship
issue. This does not change the idea that one can have
standards. It changes how you observe for those
standards. If you observe in a single instance and a
single setting and in a single context, you can be
terribly misled. You have to have a multiplicity of data
from which you can draw.
A: Scott McConnell
It starts with a contextualized focus, by asking what
the child is doing and then looking at environment. One
needs to look more than once and in an informed way. In
order to observe, you need to be informed and educated,
and developing a question in the observation. Once we
have a measure of a particular activity, then we ask how
does it change as a function of the mother present vs.
not being present, or different aspects of the care
environment.
Q: How does one observe a relationship?
A: Kathryn Barnard
First, you need to have the context of a question that
you want to answer about the relationship. We
conceptualized the interaction model as being reciprocal.
The child influenced the interaction and the parent
influenced the interaction, but our bias was that the
parent had more responsibility for the interaction than
the child. And then we began to identify what is
important in the relationship in terms of learning and
cognitive performance, etc. So, we conceptualized the
categories of child behavior and parent behavior. For
parent behavior, we thought it was important that parents
read their babies’ cues, were sensitive to
developmental stages, and arranged things in a context
that was supportive of developmental performance of the
child. We also thought it was the parents’ jobs in
the interaction to respond to distress cues of a young
infant and modify the environment in response to the
distress cues.
A: Sam Meisels
What about the positive cues of the babies: the
gurgles and giggles, etc.?
A: Kathryn Barnard
I have a theoretical bias that it is the
caregiver’s role in the first three years of life to
help children out of negative states. They can’t get
out of them themselves. The predominant emotion during
the first three years of life, of an infant who is
thriving, should be positive.
Q: Do the effects of genetic
personality/disposition of the infant play a role in
assessment?
A: Marie Anzalone
Yes, children contribute. They have neuromaturation,
they have genetic susceptibilities, they have
capabilities and deficits and dysfunction that interact
with the social and physical environment and context.
That complex system is what produces the dynamic that we
look at as function. And so when we observe children, we
are looking at the dyad, parent or primary caregiver and
child, the goodness of fit between partners, and what is
produced by that.
A: Scott McConnell
However, kids are also developing. My hunch is, if we
could do a good job of measuring development, that would
also be related to their developmental outcome. It is the
interactional substance that is the important thing to
measure and what we want to study is the context that
surrounds that interaction because that is a powerful
predictor of developmental outcomes.
A: Kathryn Barnard
I have come to the conclusion that the more dependent
people are on the environment, the more influenced they
are by it. There are babies that are more
vulnerable and that need an environment that scaffolds
their function. I think it is a particular quality of
infants that most of them need and are very reliant on
what the environment is like. There is no infant that
exists alone.
A: Sam Meisels
There is also no observational system that exists
alone. It has a lot to do with what you look at. The
camera has a lens and it has to be pointed at something.
As observers and assessors, you have to go in with a
framework. The task of those who create those assessments
is to be able to justify the framework.
Q: How do behaviorists determine what
should be observed?
A: Scott McConnell
I am interested in how the world organizes itself to
help kids grow up. There are parts of biology and
genetics that drive a part of development. But, from an
educational intervention perspective, it is not terribly
important. My job is to take a child and figure out what
the developmental opportunities are and the goals that we
are going to set for that child that are reasonable but
ambitious and then how we’re going to organize that
child’s life, both formally and informally, to help
them move toward those goals. In doing that, what I want
to understand is how experiences, opportunities,
interactions and biology come together in a fairly
fancy and hard-to-understand dance. A child can be
different from one day to the next, and I want to
understand how I as a practitioner, researcher, and
possibly policy influencer might contribute to that
change.
A: Sam Meisels
I would never describe myself as a behaviorist, but my
work is behavioral. It has to be behavioral if it is
going to make sense to practitioners. But it is hard to
say what is a behaviorist’s perspective. Is it how
you keep track or what you keep track of?
A: Scott McConnell
Perhaps the defining feature of this behaviorist
approach is a focus on learning and a focus on how events
and interactions surround kids’ behaviors in ways
that produce clear, discriminable stimuli, things that
help them understand how the environment is organized and
clear discriminable responses to their behaviors.
A: Kathryn Barnard
One of the things that happens to me is that I switch
into a behavioral mode when I see that there is a
problem. I begin to narrow down and watch the process of
action-reaction.
Q: If you had $10 million to spend in
the areas of strategies and methods of observation and
assessment, where would you go?
A: Sam Meisels
To me, the issue is where are you going with the
observation, how are you going to use the observation,
and what is the value of doing something with that
observation? How can our observations be used to improve
the lot of children and families with whom we are
working? I would use it to focus on the fusion of
assessment and intervention.
A: Kathryn Barnard
We have reached a new era in our society about early
infancy. It used to be that we felt that the family was
the unit where young infants grew and developed. Now over
60% of all infants are in the care of people other than
their parents. This moves early child care out of the
realm of the family into the role of institutions within
our society. I think a very critical question is about
the nature of caregiving environments and the
characteristics of caregiving environments of children
from infancy through three that foster their development,
and how the relationship of the child to the parents can
be fostered to make that relationship positive and
stronger. We have a responsibility for developing
standards in terms of early childrearing environments,
much in the way that we develop standards for school
curriculum.
A: Marie Anzalone
I feel that the world is moving to evidence-based
practice, so that is where I would spend my $10 million
–looking at whether our interventions actually work
A: Scott McConnell
There are three things I would spend that money on.
The first one is reliability and feasibility of making
clinical decisions about kids. There are judgments that
skilled clinicians can make that we ought to have trust
in. What I want to be able to do is learn how they did
it, so that I can make the same quality of decisions that
they made, and I want to be able to reproduce that across
lots of people. Another is electronic technology.
Electronic technology is going to change how we do a lot
of this work. There are lots of examples that we cannot
even dream of yet that electronic technology will somehow
beat what we did in the ‘70s. Third, as developers
of assessment, we need to think about whether there are
ways that we can collect information that is very
important, that gives people critical information, but
that doesn’t take them a lot of time to get.
Q: What are your thoughts about the
bidirectional relationship between assessment and
intervention in the birth to three range?
A: Sam Meisels
The conventional rule of testing and teaching is that
the classroom and assessment are separate. Today, not
only do we look to a linkage between assessment and
intervention, but a fusion between assessment and
intervention. Intervention without assessment is blind
and purposeless. Assessment without intervention is
static and of limited relevance and utility. If
assessments are going to be of value, they will lead to
action of some sort. Teachers are the data collectors for
the assessment information, but they are also the source
of intervention.
A: Kathryn Barnard
What I find is that although people do assessments,
there is not a whole lot of evidence that they act on the
assessment that they perform. If people are going to
develop an assessment process, should one of the
requirements be that they link the assessment process to
actions? Often we fail to communicate to the provider
about what you should try and where you should start. You
don’t do a screening or an assessment unless you
have a program or treatment in mind. Too often,
assessments are done without follow-through.
A: Scott McConnell
Assessment is the systematic gathering of information
to make a decision. Be very clear about the question to
be answered.
Q: What forces drive assessors to use
standardized methods of assessment?
A: Sam Meisels
Standardization is our friend. Standardization is
often associated in people’s minds with
psychometrics, which has to do with a certain method of
evaluating the accuracy and the consistency of
information acquired by an assessment. But fundamentally,
standardization refers to formal rules of application and
interpretation, and that is important to any
assessment. Today, people are moving beyond reliability
and validity in the psychometric world and are looking at
consequential validity, which is a way of looking at the
impact of an assessment on those who have been assessed.
A: Kathryn Barnard
One of the things that, to me, is a benefit of
standardization is passing on the knowledge of the
experts to people who have less experience. For people
who don’t have knowledge in the field, it helps to
have techniques that are standardized and defined that
they can read and see, and then go back to the criteria.
Eventually they learn the system.
A: Scott McConnell
Standardization also has the potential to reduce bias
in assessment practices broadly and increase access,
particularly if the standardization is around when and
how to use an assessment protocol. It reduces variance
due to professional judgment. To some extent, if
assessment is going to help, we have a responsibility to
make sure that it is universally available to those
children and those families for whom it might be
beneficial.
A: Marie Anzalone
The value of standardization is that it imparts a
small part of the clinical reasoning of an expert by
giving the novice some rules on which to base
interpretation of a given child’s performance.
Q: What is it about studying children
birth to three within the context of the intimacy of the
parent/child relationship that is different from
assessing school-age children?
A: Sam Meisels
With birth to three years old, there is a minimum of
three players: a baby, a family member, and an assessor.
The relationship is brought in automatically. There is no
such thing as a baby; there is only a baby in
relationship.
Q: What is the relationship between
demographic characteristics and families at risk? How do
these relate to old versus new methodology?
A: Scott McConnell
We as an early childhood community of researchers and
providers have not really grappled with this dilemma of
demographic or other characteristics that correlate with
outcomes that may or may not be desirable. I don’t
think we have good tools for discussing it. I don’t
think we have good standards for evaluating what we find
and how to know whether it is a desirable or undesirable
outcome.
A: Sam Meisels
I had the opportunity to spend time with some
colleagues who are here working in St. Paul public
schools where more than half of the children are not
English speakers. We were talking about how a holistic
observational assessment can be useful in a setting like
that, where teachers have to deal with so much diversity
their classroom. They find that an observational
assessment is much more useful than a set of closed-ended
conventional test items.
A: Kathryn Barnard
I think that in terms of the issue of gender,
socioeconomic status, race, and ethnic background, you
don’t observe a lot of difference between babies;
what you observe is a difference in the caretaking
response. You may see differences in the baby later
because of the caregiving response.
A: Marie Anzalone
I think we just don’t trust our ability to draw
the line in terms of respecting cultural traditions. One
of our attitudes about disability as a western culture is
that we can influence or change the impact of a
disability on function or that we can change the
disability itself. Well, I’ve worked with cultural
groups that accept the disability and their mandate is to
love their child, take care of their child, nurture their
child, and accept their child, and that means not going
in and changing their child.
A: Scott McConnell
Whether I like it or not, as a white man it is very,
very difficult to push this conversation along much. I
can gather information and I can share information,
respectfully and carefully, so that I am not opening
myself up to being punished. However, the truth is that I
cannot help much about what to do with that information.
I have discovered that my opinions, for better or for
worse, are not persuasive. I am struggling as a
professional about trying to understand how to embrace an
area of research that touches on these issues, but I
think it is very difficult for me to add the social
meaning and importance to them and to enter them into the
social discourse so that others might be able to make
sense of them.
Q: What are your thoughts about the
interface of science and policy in the area of early
childhood?
A: Kathryn Barnard
What I find in terms of the public is that there is a
general unawareness of the importance of infancy as a
period of life which significant things take place. Part
of it is knowing what message will persuade the policy
makers who set the decisions about how we spend our
money. So, I think that when you can provide relatively
solid information to people and illustrate the importance
of infant learning and brain development, that is enough
for a lot of the influential leaders... getting the
message out to them. Neuroscience has come out of the
closet.
A: Sam Meisels
But it can be oversold, which is the thesis of a new
book by John Brewer, The Myth of the First Three Years.
The myth that he talks about is the myth that what takes
place in the first three years is irreversible and
irreplaceable. I think we do need to be careful about the
implications we draw from research on neuroscience.
A: Scott McConnell
And I wonder if some of the overselling was due to the
fact that we were so happy that someone was finally
paying attention to the kids that we were concerned
about...
A: Sam Meisels
...But that is the policy issue. Why is it that we
have the need to go and find some "hard
science" that makes this period of life important?
We don’t need to go and find neurological bases for
the importance of these first three years. We always knew
babies had brains.
A: Marie Anzalone
But I don’t think that somebody who disagrees
with the funding issues is going to disagree with the
importance of the first three years of life. But do we as
early childhood professionals know what to do about it?
Do we know what policies we want? Do we as a society know
what we want done? That is our challenge, to get some
unity of message for the future of early childhood
education.
Q: What is your vision for assessment
for the birth to three population?
A: Scott McConnell
Giving parents and early childhood providers a way to
share a common perspective about a young child’s
development in ways that help them assess a rate of
growth and in a way that relates to long-term outcomes.
The second part is a set of assessment practices that
helps providers reduce the uncertainty in planning
interventions for children when they need them.
A: Kathryn Barnard
I have turned my attention to the childcare provider.
We are working with members of the community to form a
program in which they learn the content together and then
in their own community setting provide enhanced
consultation and more opportunities for training to the
provider.
A: Marie Anzalone
My priorities in terms of looking at assessment is
trying to influence the assessment process instead of the
assessment tool, and the clinical reason process that
underlies that which leads to ways of helping families
and children.
A: Sam Meisels
The things that are animating my work are a
focus on functional assessment
- assessment that focuses on everyday,
naturally occurring, practical behaviors
- the fusion of assessment and
intervention in the first few years of life such that they inform
and communicate with one another
- designing refined assessments and
enhanced interventions.
Closing
Remarks
Kathryn Barnard
Infants can’t wait.
Marie Anzalone
Embrace complexity.
Sam Meisels
Minnesota, you are so far ahead of a lot of other people that
you should recognize how wonderful you are, and just keep trying
to make it better.
Scott McConnell
We as a country have made great strides, and I think the
challenge is to think about the accomplishments we have made and
not to forget about the challenges that we have ahead of us, and
figure out how we are going to maintain some degree of optimism
and some degree of effort to move toward those challenges and try
to resolve them.
Richard Weinberg
On a positive note, and in the tradition of being a Pollyanna,
I will remind you of the quote that
"Infants and young
children are a dividend that comes
from our ancestral faith in
the future."
This summary of the
1999 Round Table was written by Christina Robert, Irving B.
Harris Center for Infant and Toddler Development, University of
Minnesota.
Upcoming
Courses Related to Observation and Assessment of Young Children
The following courses are being offered at the University of
Minnesota, Twin Cities –
• CPSY 4310:
Special Topics in Child Development
82943: Mooney-McLoone, Ann., Iss/Tech: Systematic
Observation, Offered 7/3/00 to 7/12/00
• EPSY 5849:
Observation and Assessment of Young
Children: Scott McConnell, Offered Spring 2001
Harris
Center Summer Institute 2000
The Irving B. Harris Training Center for Infant and Toddler
Development at the University of Minnesota is offering the
following summer courses.
• CPsy 4310 Sec.1:
Early relationships: Attachment theory and its clinical
applications.
(2 cr.) June 19-23, 2000.
• CPsy 4310 Sec.2:
Touchpoints: Building relationships with parents.
(1 cr.) July 3-4, 2000.
• CPsy 4310 Sec.3:
Issues and techniques in the systematic observation of
infants and young children.
(2 cr.) July 3, 5, 10, & 12, 2000.
• CPsy 4310 Sec.4:
Early intervention from a Relationship-Based Perspective.
(2 cr.) July 24-27, 2000.
• CPsy 4310 Sec.5:
Understanding and promoting active fathering with young
children.
(1 cr.) August 3-4, 2000.
• CPsy 4310 Sec.6:
Attachment disturbances and disorders.
(1 cr.) August 1-2, 2000.
For more information about summer classes,
call (612) 624-5886.
Early Report is published by the Center for
Early Education and Development (CEED), University
of Minnesota, 1954 Buford Avenue,
Suite 425, St. Paul, MN, 55108
ceed@umn.edu (email)
http://cehd.umn.edu/ceed (Web)
CEED provides information
regarding young children (birth to age eight), including children
with special needs, in the areas of education, child care, child
development, and family education. CEED activities include
research, training, and publications geared toward improving
professional practices, supporting parents, and informing policy
development.
The University of
Minnesota is an equal opportunity employer and educator. The
College of Education and Human Development is committed to
recruiting, enrolling, and education a diverse population of
students who represent the overall composition of our society.
This publication is available in alternate formats upon request.
Mary McEvoy, Director
Scott McConnell, Acting Director
Judy Bartlett, Executive Assistant
Karen Anderson, Administrative Assistant
Connie Burkhart, Graphic Design
|
Spring 2000,
Volume 27, Issue 1