Early Years Learning Environment
Assessing the Quality of Early Years Learning Environments
Abstract
This article describes a means of evaluating early years classrooms from the perspective of the child's experience. Nine key themes, such as motivation and independence, are identified as representing significant aspects of a high-quality environment for learning. The manner in which these manifest themselves in relation to the three elements of the interactional trianglethe children, the adults, and their physical environmentis assessed by means of an observation schedule called the Quality Learning Instrument (QLI). The paper illustrates the design and validation of the instrument with data from a project involving observations of classroom practice in Northern Ireland …show more content…
145). Furthermore, any method that adopts a simplistic tick-box approach may suffer, as Athey (1990) puts it, from being: "measurement without description and conceptual understanding [which] can capture only the organizational surface of trivial features of situations" (p. …show more content…
In Classroom 4, during structured play, a group of children were eagerly looking at photographs of their trip to the zoo. After chatting about their experiences, they painted pictures of the animals they saw, to add to the zoo display.
3. A group of five boys were playing on trucks in Kindergarten 2. They were making the sound of a fire siren and added a rope and some buckets to their trucks. A pedagogue provided them with a hose, and they pedaled hastily to the sand tray to put out "the bush fire." 1. The children in Classroom 8 had been asked to complete a worksheet, which involved them coloring a snake red, to allow the teacher to hear reading. Having completed the activity quickly, easily, and in many cases carelessly, a group of boys began to hide under tables and throw books across the table at one another.
2. In Classroom 1, the entire class was involved in playing the "farmer wants a wife" in the assembly hall during a PE lesson. The children sang the song repeatedly (approximately five times), showing little signs of enthusiasm in the process. A group of boys started to pull the others in the circle and then ran to the toilets. Other children then left the circle and went to the
Abstract
This article describes a means of evaluating early years classrooms from the perspective of the child's experience. Nine key themes, such as motivation and independence, are identified as representing significant aspects of a high-quality environment for learning. The manner in which these manifest themselves in relation to the three elements of the interactional trianglethe children, the adults, and their physical environmentis assessed by means of an observation schedule called the Quality Learning Instrument (QLI). The paper illustrates the design and validation of the instrument with data from a project involving observations of classroom practice in Northern Ireland …show more content…
145). Furthermore, any method that adopts a simplistic tick-box approach may suffer, as Athey (1990) puts it, from being: "measurement without description and conceptual understanding [which] can capture only the organizational surface of trivial features of situations" (p. …show more content…
In Classroom 4, during structured play, a group of children were eagerly looking at photographs of their trip to the zoo. After chatting about their experiences, they painted pictures of the animals they saw, to add to the zoo display.
3. A group of five boys were playing on trucks in Kindergarten 2. They were making the sound of a fire siren and added a rope and some buckets to their trucks. A pedagogue provided them with a hose, and they pedaled hastily to the sand tray to put out "the bush fire." 1. The children in Classroom 8 had been asked to complete a worksheet, which involved them coloring a snake red, to allow the teacher to hear reading. Having completed the activity quickly, easily, and in many cases carelessly, a group of boys began to hide under tables and throw books across the table at one another.
2. In Classroom 1, the entire class was involved in playing the "farmer wants a wife" in the assembly hall during a PE lesson. The children sang the song repeatedly (approximately five times), showing little signs of enthusiasm in the process. A group of boys started to pull the others in the circle and then ran to the toilets. Other children then left the circle and went to the