VALIDATION OF A TEACHER MEASURE OF SCHOOL READINESS WITH PARENT AND CHILD-CARE PROVIDER REPORTS

Early Development Instrument (EDI) is a relatively new tool, developed at the Canadian Centre for Studies of Children at Risk at McMaster University to assess readiness to learn at school among 5-year-old children, prior to their entry to Grade 1 (Janus & Offord 2000). Readiness to learn at school is defined as a child's ability to meet the task demands of school, such as being cooperative, sitting quietly and listening to the teacher, and to benefit from the educational activities that are offered by the school (Doherty 1996). The key domains included in the measure are: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communications skills/general knowledge. Teachers are the only informants and therefore it is imperative to establish the inter-rater reliability of the instrument. Moreover, additional data from other informants (child-care providers, parents, and children themselves) allow to identify correlates of readiness to learn outcomes. This study was carried out in six child care centres in Calgary, with the total of 51 families. Kindergarten teacher, child-care teacher, and parent completed the EDI. Parents were also interviewed about child's health and interests, and child care history. Children were administered a vocabulary test (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, PPVT). For the five EDI scales, an average parent-teacher agreement was 0.46 (range 0.35-0.66), and an average kindergarten teacher-child care centre teacher agreement was 0.70 (range 0.52- 0.80). Correlations between the PPVT score and the teacher's ratings on the Language and Cognitive Development scale ranged from 0.26 to 0.44, and with ratings on the Communication Skills and General Knowledge scale ranged from 0.45 to 0.57 (all correlations statistically significant). Most, but not all, of the relevant questions from parent interview were also significantly related to the EDI scores. In addition, we found that some aspects of the child's non-parental care history, like a number of changes in child care arrangements were also related to the EDI scores. This study, despite its small sample, clearly demonstrated that the EDI has acceptable validity. Moreover, it has highlighted some issues for possible further investigations, which will be continued in larger samples.