All articles

The relevance of the article’s topic. The ability to evaluate oneself, one’s own achievements is one of the new formations of a child’s personality that appears at preschool age. The importance of the development of this regulatory ability for a preschooler is that it affects the child’s success in various activities. Numerous studies are devoted to the study of self-esteem in preschool, primary school age. But their content practically does not reveal the qualitative characteristics of self-esteem of older preschoolers. The analysis of children’s judgments allows a deeper understanding of the modern child in the space of evaluation and self-esteem, to explore the uniqueness of the evaluation field in which he develops, and also to rethink the ways to support positive self-esteem in the pedagogical process of preschool education.

The aim of the study was to identify the features of self-esteem of older preschoolers in the group with the norm of development and general underdevelopment of speech.

Description of the research progress. The study involved 50 children aged 6–7 years. There are approximately the same number of boys and girls in each of the surveyed groups. The main group of methods used by teachers were conversations and the method of participant observation of children in organized activities in the classroom, in a natural setting (games, conversations with peers, on a walk). Observation maps were compiled, existing diagnostic conversations were modified, and educational situations for assessment were identified. The severity and nature of the children’s assessment of their own activities were recorded. An additional group of methods included experimental methods for identifying self-esteem: V.G. Schur “Ladder”, “Test de Greefe”, “Draw yourself” A.M. Parishioners, Z. Vasiliauskaite, “What am I?”, Dembo-Rubinstein scales.

The results of the study. Based on the results of the diagnostics, the age norm of the level of self-esteem was found in most children. Inadequately overestimated or underestimated self-esteem was noted in children with a low level of development of the cognitive component of self-esteem, with an insufficiently developed reflective-critical attitude towards themselves. Speech disorders do not have a particular impact on the level of self-esteem of older preschoolers. When considering the qualitative characteristics of self-esteem, it was revealed that evaluative statements in children’s everyday speech are rare and meaningfully impoverished. Children do not have enough assessment and self-assessment skills. The natural speech environment does not always provide the child with sufficient means of expressing an assessment or an idea of the structure of an evaluative statement, therefore, the assessments of six-seven-year-old children are categorical and two-dimensional: do / don’t do, good / bad, normal / abnormal, love / don’t love etc.

Conclusion. The analysis of children’s judgments allows us to conclude that preschoolers have significantly limited ideas about themselves, translation, and repetition of the monotonous adult’s judgments. The image of a preschool child is impoverished, is closed on obedience, diligence, non-conflict, is devoid of value orientation, content, diversity.

The article describes the results of the development and testing of a scale for evaluating conditions for the development of creative abilities in kindergarten. The review part discusses the process of “democratizing the concept of creativity” and changing ideas about the importance of developing creative abilities in preschool childhood as a significant trend in modern psychology and education. The methodological basis of the work is: structural-dialectical approach (N. Veraksa), where the construct of “dialectical thinking” is used to describe intellectual creativity, which is understood as a system of mental actions that allows solving paradoxical situations, transforming contradictory situations in such a way that a new solution to the problem appears; the concept of imagination, which is understood as the ability to “grasp” the whole before the parts and transfer the features of one object of reality to another (Ilyenkov, 1984; Dyachenko, 1996); an approach to the development of ECERS quality assessment scales.

The scale for assessing the conditions for the development of creative abilities in kindergarten presented in the article includes four indicators: understanding of development processes, questioning, invention and transformation of contradictions, imagination.

32 preschool groups took part in the approbation. The validity of the instrument was assessed by the method of contrasting groups identified on the basis of expert assessments. Reliability was determined by the method of consistency of expert assessments: in each group, experts carried out the assessment in pairs and independently of each other. The focus of the observations was: working with imagination, quality questions addressed to children, to allow easy experimentation, supportive emotional atmosphere, sensitivity to children new and original solutions and inventions emphasis is on working with thinking as a process, reflecting the processes of change and transformation, capable to resolve conflicts.

The analysis showed that the assessment tool makes it possible to distinguish between contrasting groups for all four indicators at a significance level not lower than 0.05, which indicates its validity. Also, a high consistency of expert assessments was found both at the level of indicators and at the level of individual indicators, which indicates its reliability. The Alpha-Cronbach coefficient is 0.87, which indicates a good level of internal consistency of the instrument. The tool allows to identify and analyze the parameters of the quality of preschool education, attention to which is not emphasized in other scales, for example, in the ECERS-3 scales for a comprehensive assessment of the quality of preschool education.

The obtained data on the reliability and validity of the developed tool allow us to conclude that it can be used to assess the conditions for supporting and developing the creative abilities of children in preschool groups.

Relevance (context) of the article. Play is important not only for the full life of preschool childhood, but also for the formation of psychological readiness for school. Play support is one of the key aspects of high-quality practice. At the same time, the analysis of existing studies shows that the level of development of preschool children’s play remains low, and the conditions for it are at a minimum level. To change this situation, an objective analysis of the practice is necessary, highlighting the strengths and points of growth.

The aim of the study. Development and testing of the scale “Support for Children’s Play” (SCP) as a tool for assessing and developing the quality of the educational environment of the kindergarten.

Description of the research progress. A scale was developed and tested, consisting of 97 indicators, grouped into 7 indicators. The scale design corresponds to the instruments of the ECERS family. The course of instrument validation in 32 preschool groups is described: checking the internal consistency of the instrument (Alpha-Cronbach), reliability by the method of inter-expert consistency, checking the validity and determining the discriminative function by the method of contrast groups (the significance of differences in the Welch-modification t-tests and the Mann-Whitney shift criteria).

Research results. Statistical analysis showed that the scale has good internal consistency (Alpha-Cronbach coefficient = 0.89), validity (differences between contrast groups are significant at the level of 0.01, p-value = 7.294e-06 according to Welch-t-test, p-value = 0.0002733 according to Wilcoxon test) and sufficient reliability (the average model of deviations of paired inter-expert assessments was 0.47 points, which is significantly lower than the standard deviation for the total score of the entire sample (sd = 1.1695).

Conclusion. The SCP scale can be applied not only for external expert assessment and self-assessment, but also as a tool for the professional development of a teacher in order to reflect on his own strategy for supporting the play and finding growth points. The article proposes measures to improve the tool in order to increase reliability, including the development of a training program for experts.

This paper provides an empirical account of the complex nature of early childhood teachers’ work with growing accountability demands for collecting, reporting, and using child assessment data in the U.S. context. Particularly, this paper focuses on preschool teachers’ experience of changes in their roles and pedagogical work in implementing a criterion-referenced, commercial online child assessment system. In doing so, this paper draws on data from a qualitative research study conducted at four Head Start sites that included semi-structured, individual interviews with six teachers and five child development specialists during three different assessment checkpoint periods; multiple observations of four Head Start classrooms for five months; and an analysis of related documents. The findings from this paper highlight that the use of commercial online childhood assessment system increased and expanded teacher work with additional responsibilities and concomitant change in assessment, curriculum, and pedagogy, as well as their views of themselves as professionals.

Child neuropsychology studies brain functional causes of learning disabilities. Such causes might be conformed as types or neuropsychological profiles, each of which might be commonly established during neuropsychological clinical assessment.

The aim of the article is to show the possibilities of historical and cultural approach in neuropsychology for conformation and study of such qualitative profiles. The authors, basing on own experience during more them two decades of direction of neuropsychological assessment, present types of neuropsychological profiles, which are common in Russia and Mexico in cases of learning disabilities, according to diversity of different errors and mistakes found in each particular case.

It’s interesting to notice that there are both coincidence and difference within the process of identification of neuropsychological profiles by specialists. The article discusses the necessity of continuation of clinical analysis of syndromes as typical and atypical qualitative profiles in order to understand and provide optimal assessment and treatment in cases of learning disabilities.