Turkish Adaptation of the Early Learning Observation and Rating Scale-Teacher's Form: Validity and Reliability Study and Path Analysis for a Turkey Sample

Abstract

Acquiring information on the complete development of children during their early childhood, observing their development, and identifying the domains in which they need support have always been very important. There is a parallelism between development in the early period and learning, and development learning is best achieved by learning in children. Children have very different development patterns. As development occurs simultaneously on a broad spectrum of domains, progress in one domain affects the progress in another domain also. Thus, identification of problems in early childhood is important in terms of assessment of child's development and learning. The purpose of th study is adaptation of the early learning observation and rating scale-teacher's form, developed by Coleman, West, and Gillis, to Turkish and the Turkish culture and evaluation of the causality relations between the learning domains through Path analysis in the Turkish sample. Methodologic descriptive and model testing design methods have been used. The study sample consisted of 166 children in the 4-5-year-old group, receiving education in 59 preschool education institutions, and 20 teachers. Simple random sampling method was used in sample selection. Following the Turkish adaptation processes, the validity and reliability of the scale were examined with a pilot study. It was observed that the scale had high appearance-social and scope-construct validity, and the results obtained were coherent with the usefulness and contribution results obtained in the original study. Strong linear relationships were found between each of the seven learning domains in the scale. The early learning observation and rating scale-teacher's form, which was adapted to Turkish, was suitable for use in the Turkish sample and revealed the competence or incompetence condition of children in the learning domains of children correctly and realistically.