THE IMPACT OF CLASSROOM OBSERVATION IN EARLY EDUCATION ON CHILDREN’S OUTCOMES

Abstract

Educational practices and all that happens in the classroom are essential to children’s learning progress and their development. Despite the importance of teachers’ educational practices, in the low- or middle-income countries the practices are hardly ever measured, partly because of a lack of access to classroom observation tools and the high costs of their administration. As a result, the present research undertook the aim to analyze the improvement of educational practices on the dimensions that are comprised in the observation tool we used: classroom climate, instruction and social and emotional skills by means of classroom observation and providing feedback using the Teach observation tool. Thus, we assume that early childhood education teachers who participate in observation and feedback processes based on the Teach observation tool develop educational practices more adapted to the children’s social and emotional and cognitive needs. The study consisted of conducting a quasi-experiment with three repeated applications of the Teach observation tool on a sample of 19 kindergarten teaching staff. The 19 kindergarten teachers were from the same kindergarten in Braşov city, Kindergarten no.11, “House of joy”. The study was carried out during the 2020-2021 school year. Following the implementation of the Teach observation tool, we can conclude that its role is to facilitate the measurement of quality in early childhood education. Teaching can be a starting point for understanding, measuring and discussing the quality of teaching practices in early childhood education, leading to improved support for teachers and ultimately better learning experiences and higher outcomes for preschoolers. Also, in the future, the Teach observation tool can provide policy makers and stakeholders with the information they need to design and implement policies and programs in early childhood education.