I started my career as a preschool teacher. For 13 years, I helped 3- to 5-year-old children learn how to write their name; count, sort and use other foundational math concepts; manage their toileting and dressing independently; and meet other easily-observable school-readiness milestones. The children were flourishing, and their families were delighted with their achievements! But woven throughout the multi-faceted learning experiences supporting cognitive, language, physical, and self-help skills was something less tangible: the social and emotional skills that made all the rest possible.
Now, Iām a researcher, studying social and emotional development. Child Trends recently completed a project recommending measures of early childhood social and emotional development that can be used by federal statistical agencies to develop indicators for this domain. While the sequence and timing of achieving various milestones and skills varies greatly among young children, having such benchmarks would be helpful to practitioners supporting this area of development. During my own time teaching, very little formal assessment of this domain took place, but for the identification of problem behaviors. Although trends toward including this area of development in routine assessment activities seem to be shifting, good-quality tools that are designed and validated for use by early childhood teachers and that do not unduly burden children are limited.
[For more of this story go to http://www.childtrends.org/why...y-childhood-matters/]
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