From Principle to Practice: Using the Global Guidelines To Assess Quality Education and Care

Childhood Education, 2004 by Barbour, Ann, Boyer, Wanda, Hardin, Belinda, Wortham, Sue

Every child should have the opportunity to grow up in a setting that values children, that provides conditions for a safe and secure environment, and that respects diversity.

-from Global Guidelines for Early Childhood Education and Care in the 21st Century (ACEI/OMEP, 2000)

In July 1999, 83 early childhood professionals from 27 countries and every continent except Antarctica gathered in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, at the International Symposium on Early Childhood Education and Care for the 21st Century. Co-sponsored by the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) and the World Organization for Early Childhood Education (Organisation Modiale pour L'�ducation Pr�scolaire, or OMEP) and spearheaded by Sue Wortham, Leah Adams, and Ulla Grob-Menges, the symposium's mission was to craft guidelines for programs that serve children under the age of formal schooling in countries throughout the world.

After extensive discussions about what constitutes universal characteristics of good early education and care, working groups drafted statements that subsequently were combined, refined, and carefully edited. These efforts resulted in the joint publication of Global Guidelines for Early Childhood Education and Care in the 21st Century (hereafter referred to as the Global Guidelines) by ACEI and OMEP (2000). The Global Guidelines concisely describe basic, universal components of quality education and care for young children and, as a result, can be used worldwide. Following an overall statement of philosophy and goals, the Global Guidelines address six areas in providing comprehensive services for young children: Environment and Physical Space; Curriculum Content and Pedagogy; Early Childhood Educators and Caregivers; Partnership With Families and Communities; Young Children With Special Needs; and Accountability, Supervision, and Management. The Global Guidelines are available online at www.acei.org/wguides.htm.

The Global Guidelines were designed to serve multiple purposes: 1) they provide the basis for developing a concise list of statements to be distributed to national government leaders, 2) they can serve as the catalyst for policy discussions and curriculum development, and 3) they can guide early educators in settings throughout the world in self assessing their own child care and preschool programs.

This third purpose inspired the creation of a Self Assessment Tool (SAT) (ACEI, 2003), which is based on the Global Guidelines. This article reviews the process through which the SAT was created and some of the contexts where it already has been used. We also describe additional situations in which the SAT can be applied, and we invite others to use it and to contribute to ongoing efforts to ensure quality education and care worldwide.

Crafting the Self Assessment Tool

The Self Assessment Tool was drafted by Sue Wortham in the summer of 2000. She and Blanche Desjean-Perrotta conducted a pilot test of the SAT in San Antonio, Texas. Subsequently, Maria Olivia Herrera piloted her Spanish translation of the tool at two sites in Concepci�n, Chile. It was used again in 2001 by Ann Barbour in Los Angeles, by Belinda Hardin in North Carolina, by Ebele Maduesi in Nigeria, by Amy Lin Tan in Beijing, and by Marie Tsamaase in Botswana. Feedback from these trials was used to revise the instrument. At the 2002 ACEI Annual Conference in San Diego, a working group reviewed the proposed revisions and contributed additional suggestions. Rolf Grafwallner formatted the refined instrument and incorporated space for participants to provide relevant information about their sites.

The resultant 38-page Self Assessment Tool (available at www.acei.org/wguideshp.htm) describes criteria for quality care and education in five critical areas: Environment and Physical Space, Curriculum Content and Pedagogy, Early Childhood Educators and Caregivers, Young Children With Special Needs, and Partnerships With Families and Communities. Subcategories under each of these areas include descriptors of quality. For example, under the heading of Environment and Physical Space, a subcategory of Developmentally Stimulating Environment includes the statement, "The environment stimulates children to play, explore, and discover." Individuals using the SAT can rate their programs on a six-point scale (inadequate, minimum, adequate, good, excellent, or not applicable) on each criterion. Space provided for written descriptions of each criterion (i.e., examples) and for general comments further personalizes the SAT and encourages in-depth reflection (see Figure 1).

Translations

The SAT has been translated into Spanish, French, and Chinese; other translations (e.g., Portuguese) are in progress. Extensive work has been done on the Spanish translation. During the summer of 2003, the Anne R. Sanford Center for Research and Development, a division of Chapel Hill Training Outreach Project, Inc., received funding from an anonymous donor, at the request of Belinda Hardin, to translate the SAT into Spanish. A consensus method (Geisinger, 1994) was used in translating/adapting the tool, whereby translators and reviewers from seven different Spanish-speaking countries reconciled wording and grammar to ensure congruence with the intent of the original instrument. Funding also was used to conduct a field test study in five Latin American countries. The purposes of the study were to: 1) determine if the Spanish translation/adaptation accurately reflected the terms, content, and intent of the original self assessment; and 2) examine whether the Spanish edition provided reliable, valid, and meaningful results for early childhood programs in Spanish-speaking countries. Sixty-nine programs and 138 directors and teachers from Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela participated in the field test study.