Assessing Quality Quickly: Validation of the Responsive Interactions for Learning - Educator (RIFL-Ed.) Measure

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: In this study, we tested whether it is possible to reliably evaluate the quality of interactions between early childhood educators and children using a thin-slice coding approach. Ninety-seven early childhood educators were videotaped for two five-minute intervals: one mealtime observation and one standardized activity. Videos were scored using the shortened and revised 15-item Responsive Interactions for Learning – Educator (RIFL-Ed.) measure, an open-access measure that takes less than ten minutes to administer and score. The RIFL-Ed. demonstrated good psychometric properties when used for mealtime observations and scores were associated with the Emotional and Behavioural Support (b = 0.19, p = .02) – and to some extent the Engaged Support for Learning (b = 0.15, p = 0.07) – domains of the widely used Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS): Toddler Version. Less than half of the variance in scores was shared across educators in the same classrooms. Practice or Policy: If these preliminary results can be confirmed in larger studies, the RIFL-Ed.—an open-access measure for which fast and free online training is available– can be used to affordably scale-up targeted quality assessment and improvement efforts in early childhood education and care settings, efforts which have been shown to positively impact children’s developmental outcomes.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [890-2015-2031]. It was conducted in partnership with George Brown College and the City of Toronto. Thank you to Alessandro Eid-Ricci, Samantha Burns, Shailja Jain, and Sumayya Saleem for project and database management. Finally, we are deeply grateful for the child care center directors and staff who participated in this study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [890-2015-2031].