Teachers' Perspectives on Strength-Based and Deficit-Based Instruments for Assessing Socioemotional Development in Early Childhood.

The study compares kindergarten staff's perspectives on three tools for assessing children's emotions and social skills: Caregiver-Teacher Report Form (C-TRF), Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, Teacher version (SDQ-T), and Social Emotional Assessment Measure (SEAM). The researchers investigate how clear and relevant kindergarten staff think the tools are, whether they are easy to use, and how long it takes to fill them out.

The results show that kindergarten staff find it difficult to talk to the children's parents about sensitive topics, but that tools that focus on the children's strengths can help in such conversations. By using such tools, kindergarten staff can more easily talk to parents, even if they also have to discuss challenges. Knowing the child's strengths can also help the staff in everyday kindergarten life.

The study is part of The Daycare of the Future intervention project. A total of 59 kindergarten employees from 27 Danish kindergartens assessed a total of 291 children. The children were between two and five years old (51 percent boys). Adults who had known them for at least one year assessed the majority of the children (58%).

Sjö, N. M., Kiil, A. & Jensen, P. (2021). "Teachers' Perspectives on Strength-Based and Deficit-Based Instruments for Assessing Socioemotional Development in Early Childhood". Infants & Young Children, 34(1):33-45.