研究表明,儿童参与优质的幼儿保育和教育往往对他们的社会情绪产生直接的积极影响,自我调节,和成就成果。大多数关于早期儿童保育和教育影响的研究都集中在美国,但是倡导在早期儿童保育和教育方面的经济和社会投资,以支持未来儿童的成长和福祉,现在在国际范围内存在。幼儿园前计划的长期结果并不那么强劲。为了改善儿童的长期结果,一个建议的策略是有意的,脚本化课程。我们在这本专著中的目标是提供一个完全集成和全面的大规模,纵向,在美国进行的“心理工具”(工具的内部一致性)幼儿园前课程的现场随机对照试验。我们的意图是双重的。首先,我们研究工具课程本身的影响,解决课程对提高幼儿园前质量和儿童学业的潜在影响,执行功能,自我调节,和社会结果。第二,我们考虑一个更广泛的问题,即是否使用故意,早期教育期间的脚本化课程可以,更一般地说,提高儿童的短期和长期结果。从Vygotskian框架开发的,工具侧重于为儿童提供学习的认知工具,然后他们可以将其应用于获取和维持学术知识以及行为能力的任务。因此,工具是一个集成的,综合课程,不是一个补充。工具方法从儿童发展的社会文化角度出发,强调儿童与知识渊博的他人合作获得技能和文化工具。详细描述了4年纵向集群随机对照试验的方法。我们提供有关招聘的全面信息,治疗条件的随机化,儿童评估仪器和程序,以及观察性评估,包括实施的忠诚度以及教师和儿童课堂行为。我们提供的结果比较了32个分配给工具条件的教室和28个分配给正常工作的控制条件为儿童的学业,执行功能,自我调节,以及从幼儿园到一年级结束的社会收益。课程的开发人员特别希望看到这些措施的好处。工具对任何结果都没有积极影响。缺乏预期的课程效果需要仔细考虑,并提出了更普遍的问题,即课程经验如何在评估的技能中体现出来。作为理解这些发现的第一步,我们专注于实施工具的教师,并检查了课程按预期交付的程度以及实施的忠诚度与儿童在幼儿园前的成绩之间的关系。结果表明,观察到的实施保真度差异很大,但实施保真度与任何儿童结果之间没有一致的关联。在与积极的学生成果相关的更一般的实践和互动方面,课程的开发人员假设实施工具将增强课堂实践和师生互动。他们预计会受到影响的方面包括非教学行为的数量,教师主导和儿童主导的活动,老师和孩子的谈话,社会学习互动,课堂情感氛围,教师教学质量,和儿童的参与程度。教师在治疗和控制教室内的差异与在所检查的大多数方面的条件之间的差异一样大。我们发现大多数实践和相互作用的实验条件之间没有差异。课程的范围和内容各不相同,但它们普遍旨在改变课堂过程,从而促进目标技能的发展。为了让这个中介假设成立,有针对性的课堂过程必须与儿童成果相关联。我们研究了课堂过程与儿童的幼儿园和幼儿园收获之间的关联,并发现了它们在幼儿课堂中的重要性。这些发现证明了确定策略以增强这些课堂实践和互动的价值。我们将研究结果置于幼儿教育扩展政策和实践的更大背景下,我们提供了一系列经验教训。我们报告的研究是对单一课程的单一评估,然而,我们认为,吸取的教训是一般性的,并阐明了为什么对课程的评估会产生如此不同的结果。
Research demonstrates that children\'s participation in quality early childhood care and education often has immediate positive effects on their social-emotional, self-regulation, and achievement outcomes. Most of the research on the impacts of early child care and education has focused narrowly on the United States, but advocacy for economic and social investment in early childhood care and education to support future children\'s growth and well-being now exists on an international scale. The longer-term outcomes from prekindergarten programs have not been as strong. To improve children\'s long-term outcomes, one suggested strategy is an intentional, scripted curriculum. Our goal in this monograph is to provide a fully integrated and comprehensive account of a large-scale, longitudinal, field-based randomized control trial of the Tools of the Mind (Internal consistency of the Tools) prekindergarten curriculum that occurred in the United States. Our intent is twofold. First, we examine the impact of the Tools curriculum itself, addressing both the potential impacts of the curriculum to improve prekindergarten quality and children\'s academic, executive function, self-regulation, and social outcomes. Second, we consider the broader question of whether the use of intentional, scripted curricula during early education can, more generally, enhance both short- and long-term outcomes in children. Developed from a Vygotskian framework, Tools focuses on equipping children with cognitive tools for learning that they can then apply to the task of acquiring and sustaining academic knowledge as well as behavioral competencies. Thus, Tools is an integrated, comprehensive curriculum, not a supplementary one. The Tools approach follows from a socio-cultural perspective on child development that emphasizes children\'s acquisition of skills and cultural tools in collaboration with knowledgeable others. The methodology of the 4-year longitudinal cluster randomized control trial is described in detail. We provide comprehensive information about recruitment, randomization of treatment condition, child assessment instrumentation and procedures, as well as observational assessments, including fidelity of implementation and teacher and child classroom behaviors. We provide results comparing 32 classrooms assigned to the Tools condition and 28 assigned to the business-as-usual control condition for children\'s academic, executive function, self-regulation, and social gains from prekindergarten to the end of first grade. Developers of the curriculum specifically expected to see benefits on these measures. There were no positive effects for Tools on any of the outcomes. The lack of expected curriculum effects required careful consideration and raised more general questions about how curriculum experiences manifest themselves in assessed skills. As a first step to understanding the findings, we focused on teachers who were implementing Tools and examined the degree to which the curriculum was delivered as intended and the relations between fidelity of implementation and children\'s outcomes in prekindergarten. Results indicated a wide variation in observed fidelity of implementation but no consistent associations between fidelity of implementation and any child outcomes. In terms of more general practices and interactions associated with positive student outcomes, developers of the curriculum hypothesized that implementing Tools would enhance classroom practices and teacher-child interactions. Among the aspects they expected to be affected were the amount of non-instructional behaviors, teacher-led and child-directed activities, teacher and child talk, social learning interactions, classroom emotional climate, quality of teacher instruction, and children\'s level of involvement. Teachers varied as much within treatment and control classrooms as they did between conditions on most of the aspects examined. We found no differences between experimental conditions on most practices and interactions. Curricula vary in scope and content, but they are universally intended to change classroom processes in ways that in turn will facilitate the development of targeted skills. For this mediational hypothesis to hold, the targeted classroom processes must be associated with child outcomes. We examined the associations between the classroom processes and children\'s prekindergarten and kindergarten gains and found support for their importance in early childhood classrooms. These findings demonstrate the value of identifying strategies to enhance these classroom practices and interactions. We situate the findings of our study within the larger context of early childhood education expansion policies and practices, and we offer a set of lessons learned. The study we report is a single evaluation of a single curriculum, yet we hold that the lessons learned are general and shed light on understanding why evaluations of curriculum have yielded such mixed results.