Assessing and Evaluating Early Childhood Education Systems

This book provides global perspectives on assessment and evaluation practices with young children in contemporary times within early childhood education systems. It critiques and evaluates current evaluation and assessment goals and tools in early childhood settings. The book also compares the different approaches to educational evaluations from different countries in early childhood education and care. It provides insights into different approaches, techniques as well as perspectives of micro and macro-levels of analysis. This book aims to create an international understanding about the thematic conceptions of assessment for early childhood education and care.

Autorentext

Susanne Garvis is a professor of education (early childhood) and Chair of the Department of Education at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. Her research focuses on policy, quality and learning within the field of early childhood education. She is known for her mixed methods research that has had significant impact on policy development across many countries.

Professor and vice director Heidi Harju-Luukkainen (Nord University, Norway and University of Jyväskylä, Finland) holds a Ph.D. in education, special education teacher qualification and a qualification in leadership and management from Finland. She has published more than 200 international books, journal articles and reports as well as worked in more than 30 projects globally. Harju-Luukkainen has worked at top ranked universities in the USA like UCLA, USC as well as in many Nordic research universities. She has developed education programs for universities, been a PI of PISA sub-assessments in Finland and functioned as board professional. Her research areas are early childhood education, justice in education and international student assessment.

JJonna Kangas holds an Adjunct Professor with PhD and ECEC teacher qualification. She works as senior lecturer at University of Helsinki. She researches early childhood education context in Finland and internationally with the perspectives of the voice of the children, playful learning and play-based pedagogy, early math, participatory pedagogy, curriculum studies and teacher reflective practices. She is a director of the Blended Teacher Training program for early childhood education and have developed teacher training methods and practices for developing countries.

Inhalt

1. The Importance of Evaluating Early Childhood Education Environment Quality to Support theLearning of Young Children.- 2. The Whole Child Approach in Assessments in a Bilingual Child Care Center.- 3. Municipal awareness of gifted and talented children in Finland Swedish early childhood education and care in Finland.- 4. Opportunities and Challenges: Assessment in the New Zealand Early Childhood Context.- 5. Early Skills as Predictors for Later Educational Outcome in Mathematics and Science in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark - A Further Analysis on TIMSS 2015 Data.- 6. Thinking Skills Intervention for Low-achieving Finnish Kindergarteners.- 7. Development; the alchemy of learning. The case of Andy.- 8. Progressive Feedback in Finnish early education.- 9. The educational assessment of kindergarten in China: From unitary to multiple.