Entrepreneurship in Child care Services

Entrepreneurship in Childcare Services 4 (2+2)

Lesson 30 : Evaluation of child care services and programmes

Children’s Evaluation

Children’s evaluation concentrates on child’s development and behavior. Various techniques like teacher observations, checklists, rating scales, standardized tests, portfolios are used to evaluate child’s behaviour and development.

1. Teacher observations: Throughout the year, the teacher may keep anecdotal and running records on each child and summarized by the teacher at the end of the year.
1. Noting the changes in developmental level and specific objectives the child has met is an important guideline to be followed by the teacher. But this method is time consuming and also subjective in nature.
2. Other method is systematic observations of trained teachers and other professionals supplemented with information obtained from parents and other family members.


2. Checklists: A checklist should be created which specifies the center’s objectives. The teacher merely checks whether or not the child exhibits the listed behavior.


3. Rating scales: The director may create or locate rating scale that lists the behaviors aimed at in the center’s objectives. The teacher rates each child at least at the beginning and the end of the school years.
   The checklist and rating scales are suitable for use if they are viewed as a particular teacher’s assessment of an individual child instead of as a comparison of one child or class with another.
 

4. Standardized Tests: The standardized tests are seldom used in children’s evaluation as they provide the information what teachers and parents already know about children.
 

5. Portfolios: One type of record keeping that can provide valuable information about each child is the portfolio. It consists of two part system or folder system. With one in a locked cabinet and second folder in the classroom readily accessible to the child.

Information in first folder includes forms and information regarding families, anecdotal records, progress reports, medical reports, etc and this must be confidential and should be available only to those who have a legitimate right to it.

Other observers:
The observer may observe a particular child when a teacher has concern’s about that child as the outsider’s observation brings more objective analysis.