In This Issue

Fall/Winter 2005
Volume 1 • Issue 2

Professors Receive
Allan Meyers Award

Director’s Corner

UM Students Receive
National Award

Center Updates Acronym

Prevention Center
of Excellence

$2.9M Reading Program Grant

Director Named
AUCD President

New Leadership for CAC

Search Tool Facilitates
Access to MEC Training

Grant to Increase Access
to Volunteer Opportunities

Intervention Methods
Subject of Conference

Screening Instrument
Under Development

Co-Instructional Model
Developed by CCIDS

Center Staff Star in
New Video

Guest Column:
CAC Member Tours
South Africa

Brain Research Informs
Best Practice

Partnership for EC
Health Formed

Presentations & Publications

CenterPoint Home

The Early Childhood and the Research and Evaluation teams of the Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies (CCIDS) have been working together closely since early summer 2004 to refine the Screening and Planning Guide for Inclusive Early Care and Education, version 4. This instrument is intended to provide administrators, teachers, and caregivers in the field of early care and education, a concrete way to evaluate how classrooms are addressing the needs of diverse learners within early care and education settings.

The Screening and Planning Guide for Inclusive Early Care and Education serves as a starting point for addressing program improvement and development from a quality, inclusive perspective, and was developed using the principles of Universal Design. Universal Design considers how physical spaces and learning strategies meet the needs of the broadest range of learners. With this principle at the forefront, the instrument provides administrators, teachers, and caregivers a concrete look at how they are planning for and addressing the education of all children, including children with diverse linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds, as well as those with disabilities.

The Screening and Planning Guide for Inclusive Early Care and Education was developed as a screening instrument, but may also be a useful component of a program evaluation or program accreditation process. It is designed to be used in a variety of center-based community programs serving children ages 3-5, including nursery school programs, childcare centers, public preschool school programs, and Head Start programs.

Components of the Screening and Planning Guide for Inclusive Early Care and Education include research-based statements of inclusive program quality, the rationale for including each statement, scoring rubrics, and references for further inquiry. Areas of inclusive programming addressed are: Indoor Environment; Outdoor Environment; Curriculum and Teaching Practices; Work with Families; and Administrative Practices.

The successful inclusion of children with diverse learning styles, including children with disabilities, special health needs, and children with varying linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds, best occurs in quality early care and education settings. Therefore, this instrument contains research-based quality components and reflects the principles of developmentally appropriate practice and universal design. In addition, the Screening and Planning Guide for Inclusive Early Care and Education provides specific indicators that outline what a program does or can do to move toward more accessible, individualized, and intentional planning and instruction to address the needs of children with a variety of learning styles, abilities, and backgrounds.

Because the instrument is for screening rather than evaluation, it contains a limited number of indicators (items/statements) to allow for it to be administered in a relatively short timeframe. The majority of components are scored through direct observation of a program; other items are scored based on document reviews and interviews.

The intent of this screening instrument is to offer a vehicle for providers to continue to “raise the bar” for the quality of their programs by identifying priority areas to be addressed, providing a format with a timeline for addressing those priorities, and sharing resources for further inquiry. Additionally, the instrument facilitates providers’ access to current research and standards of quality inclusive early care and education. Assisting providers to design an environment and curriculum to address quality in practice standards and quality of access to physical, social, and learning environments for all children is the project’s ultimate goal.

As of September 2005, teams of CCIDS Early Childhood and Research and Evaluation staff field-tested the Screening and Planning Guide for Inclusive Early Care and Education in more than 20 center-based, public school, Head Start, and collaborative preschool classrooms around the state. In collaboration with the University of Southern Maine Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service Maine Roads to Quality, field-testing occurred in programs that are also pursuing National Association for the Education of Young Children accreditation through Maine Roads to Quality’s accreditation cohort groups. Results from preliminary data analysis indicated the correlation between ECERS (Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale) scores and Screening and Planning Guide scores was highly significant.

Previous funding partners in this project included the Maine Department of Education, The Maine Department of Health and Human Services Office of Child Care and Head Start, the Maine Developmental Disabilities Council, and the Administration on Developmental Disabilities, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Pending future funding, additional data will be collected to fully validate the instrument before it is made widely available as a teaching tool to help early care and education professionals move closer to providing quality inclusive care to all preschool children.

— Sue Chevalier
Stacy Doore
Linda Labas
Shihfen Tu