Guide to Analyzing and Interpreting ECERS-3 Data

This title is in the Environment Rating Scale® Family of Products―the leading research-based tools to optimize the quality of children’s early learning.

"A treasure trove of information.... Technical assistance providers, coaches, and program staff will discover how the data can inform continuous quality improvement efforts and advance reflective practice. State leaders will find a solid research base and research-to-practice examples as a reference for policy decisions. Through the data, they will better understand the quality of the programs in their state and how supports are working to help providers improve their quality." ―From the Foreword by Debi Mathias, Director, ECE Quality Improvement Systems, BUILD Initiative

Early childhood is a crucial stage in a child’s life, and aspects of the environment in the physical, social-emotional, cognitive, and health and safety domains all play important roles in shaping children’s development during these early years. Having a valid and reliable measure of the quality of these aspects of children’s care settings is critical. The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale® (ECERS-3) is the leading research-based instrument for examining these influential global factors that directly impact children in early childhood environments.

In this new guide, readers will find an in-depth description of both the conceptual model underlying the ECERS-3 and innovative ways of analyzing data for a fuller understanding of what can be done with the scale and why it is integral to the evaluation of early care and education. The authors analyze a large database of classroom observations to help ECERS-3 users better understand, interpret, and utilize their own findings. Readers will also see how components of their ECERS-3 data relate to one another, within and across subscales, and within the scale as a whole.

A Guide to Analyzing and Interpreting ECERS-3 Data will assist program directors, agency administrators, preK–K teaching coaches/mentors, school principals, researchers, and others who use the ECERS-3 to more successfully document, interpret, and analyze the quality of essential influential factors in an early learning setting. This resource will help guide program improvement initiatives with insight into what is needed for children’s development and learning.

Book Features:

• Provides a framework for thinking about how early childhood care and education learning environments fit into the larger picture of influences on children’s development.
• Presents a theory of change that combines understanding how children learn and develop with how early education and care affect long-term outcomes.
• Analyzes what ECERS-3 data looks like for a large sample of classrooms and by different child and teacher characteristics.
• Includes full color tables and figures illuminating the data analysis of the classroom observations.

Richard M. Clifford, Ph.D., is senior scientist emeritus at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and past president of NAEYC.

Noreen Yazejian, Ph.D., is senior research scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Wonkyung Jang, M.S., is a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education.

Dari Jigjidsuren, Ph.D., MSW, MSPH, is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Mississippi State University.