Putting the Pieces of the Puzzle Together: Working As a Cross-Disciplinary Team In Conducting Early Childhood Assessments

1
Putting the Pieces of the Puzzle Together
Working As a Cross-Disciplinary Team In
Conducting Early Childhood Assessments

• Laurie Ford, Ph.D.
• Dept. of Educational Counselling Psych
  Special Education
• University of British Columbia
• What Develops? Understanding Assessment in
• Early Childhood Education Conference
• UBC - May 13, 2004
• laurie.ford_at_ubc.ca

2
Special Thanks..

• My graduate students at UBC USC
• Especially Carla, Jillian, Kat, Lori, MB, Sarah,
  Terri, Vanessa
• My colleagues at UBC USC
• Especially Rich, Susan, Hillel Connie
• Those who taught me about the assessment of young
  children
• Especially Bob, Nancy, Bill, Deb
• The children, families, and professionals who
  have taught me

3
What I Hope to Accomplish

• v Overview Key Issues in Effective Service
  Delivery for Young Children
• v Review Domains Critical to Examine in the
  Assessment Intervention of Young Children
• v Highlight Aspects to Consider When Conducting
  Developmentally Appropriate, Culturally
  Responsive Service Delivery to Young Children
• v Discuss aspects of working together as a team
  in conducting assessments
• v Review common cognitive assessment instruments

4

• Early childhood assessment is a field in
  transition. Dominated from its inception by
  psychometric models and measurement strategies
  used with older children, it is only now
  beginning to forge a methodology that is unique
  to young children.

Meisels Atkins-Burnett, 2000
5
Goal of Early Childhood Assessment

• To acquire new information and understanding that
  will help facilitate the childs development and
  ability to function well in the home and family
  environment

6

We need to.

• Understand and Describing, when Assessing
• A Childs Development

7
Effective Service Delivery for Young Children

• Multi-disciplinary
• Inter-disciplinary
• Trans-disciplinary

8
Effective Assessment Intervention with Young
Children

• v Multi-Domain
• v Multi-Source
• v Family-Centered
• v Interdisciplinary
• v Ecologically Valid
• v Non-discriminatory
• v Formative and Summative

9
Key Domains in the Service Delivery to Young
Children
Cognitive
Health
Sensory
Language
Social- Emotional
Physical
Adaptive
Home
Community
Family
10
Key People Involved in the Assessment of Young
Children
OT/PT
Psychologist
Educator
Social- Worker
Nutritionist
Nurse
Audiologist
Parent/ Caregiver
Siblings
Physician
SLP
Extended Family
Optometrist
11
Approaches in the Assessment of Young Children
Observation
Interview
Formal Procedures
Informal Procedures
12
Working As Team

• v Role Release
• Allowing one team member to take on a role that
  might normally be the responsibility of another
• v Arena Assessment
• Simultaneous evaluation of the child by multiple
  professionals from different disciplines
• v Case Manager/Team Facilitator
• Consider one point person and joint evaluation
  reports

13
Factors External to the Child Which Impact on
School Readiness Early Child Development

• Family Income
• Effects of poverty on childrens development
• Other Family Resources
• Parental time and stress
• Community Resources
• Family support programs, child care programs
• Societal Decisions
• Paid family leave in case of illness,
  reinbursement of child care costs
• (Doherty, 1997)

14
Preschool
Kindergarten
Teachers
Peers
Teachers
Peers
Time
Child
Child
Neighborhood
Family
Neighborhood
Family
15
An Ecological Perspective

• Rimm-Kaufman and Pianta (2000) propose an
  ecologically informed approach to the study of
  school transitions
• Ecological and Dynamic Model of Transition
• Involves the combined influence of the child,
  direct, indirect, and dynamic effects of contexts
  on childrens transition to school and the
  bidirectional interactions that exist between the
  child and their social networks.
• Central importance of this model is the emphasis
  on development of relationships over time

16
On the Assessment of Young Children

• The science of strange behavior of children in
  strange situations with strange adults for the
  briefest possible period of time

Bronfenbrenner, 1977
17
Principles of Appropriate Assessment of Young
Children (adapted from Greenspan Meisels,
1996)

• Assessment should be based on an integrated
  developmental model.
• Assessment involves multiple sources of
  information and multiple components.
• An assessment should follow an orderly sequence.

18
Principles of Appropriate Assessment of Young
Children (adapted from Greenspan Meisels,
1996)

• The childs relationship and interactions with
  their caregiver should be the cornerstone of the
  assessment.
• An understanding of the sequence of typical
  development is an essential framework to
  interpreting differences.

19
Principles of Appropriate Assessment of Young
Children (adapted from Greenspan Meisels,
1996)

• An assessment should emphasize attention to the
  childs developmental level and way of organizing
  experiences and functional capacity in multiple
  domains.
• The assessment should identify the childs
  current competencies and strengths, as well as
  the competencies that will constitute
  developmental progression in a continuous growth
  model of human development.

20
Principles of Appropriate Assessment of Young
Children (adapted from Greenspan Meisels,
1996)

• Assessment is a collaborative process.
• The process of assessment should always be viewed
  as the first step in a potential intervention.
• Reassessment of a childs developmental status
  should occur in the context of day-to-day family
  or EI activities or both.

21
Continuum of Assessment Intervention

• Assessment and intervention are distinct
  processes, they exist on a continuum.
• The goal of any good assessment should be to
  design effective intervention for the young child
  and their family.

22
Measuring Intelligence

• More broadly we think of measuring cognitive
  abilities
• Most tests provide an overall quotient or score
• Every test calls it something different
• The more meaningful information typically comes
  from examining the factor, component, or subtest
  scores

23
Common Cognitive Assessment Instruments

• Intelligence Tests or Measures of Cognitive
  Abilities..
• Wechsler Scales (WISC-IV WPPSI-III WAIS-III)
• Stanford-Binet Scales of Intelligence (SB5)
• Differential Ability Scales (DAS)
• Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities
  (WJIII COG)
• Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-II
  (KABC-II)

24
Wechsler Scales

• Generally the most widely used
• Provides an overall score -- Full Scale IQ (FSIQ)
• Start with Two Scale Breakdown
• Verbal (VIQ) Performance (PIQ)
• Secondary Factors are Useful for Interpretation
• Verbal Comprehension (VC), Perceptual
  Organization (PO) Freedom from Distractibility
  (FD) Processing Speed (PS)

25
The Wechsler Scales

• WISC-IV (Wechsler, 2003)
• Ages 6 to 16.5
• WPPSI-III (Wechsler, 2001)
• Ages 2-7
• WAIS-III (Weschler, 1997)
• Ages 16 through senior adult

26
Stanford-Binet Scales of Intelligence- Fifth
Edition

• No Bonus for Speed
• Overall score is Full Scale IQ (FSIQ)
• Two Primary Domains
• Verbal IQ (VIQ) Nonverbal IQ (NVIQ)
• Additional Factors
• Fluid Reasoning
• Knowledge
• Memory
• Visual Spatial Processing
• Quantitative Reasoning

27
All Five Factors Measured in Verbal and Nonverbal
Domains
FACTORS
DOMAINS
Verbal
Nonverbal
Fluid Reasoning Knowledge Quantitative
Reasoning Visual-Spatial Processing Working Memory
28
Full Scale IQ
Factor Indexes
Fluid Reasoning Knowledge Quantitative
Reasoning Visual-Spatial Processing Working
Memory
29
Differential Ability Scales

• Overall Score is the General Cognitive Ability
  score (GCA)
• Three Main Factors
• Verbal Reasoning
• Nonverbal Reasoning
• Spatial Reasoning

30
Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities

• Overall Score is called the General Intellectual
  Ability score (GIA)
• Seven Broad Factors
• Fluid Reasoning (Gf)
• Comprehension-Knowledge (Gc)
• Long-Term Retrieval (Glr)
• Visual-Spatial (Gv)
• Auditory Processing (Ga)
• Short-Term Memory (Gsm)
• Processing Speed (Gs)