The video clips are grouped into two categories, based on the group age:

• Toddler, which includes classrooms serving children from 0 to 3 years old, focusing mainly on 2- and 3-year old children
• Kindergarten, which includes the classrooms serving children from 3 to 6 years-old, focusing mainly on 4- and 5- year old children

For each video, a set of materials were prepared:

• The video context, describing the setting in which the videos took place.
• A short written description of the activity taking place
• A set of quality indicators grouped into 4 categories (GOOD-QUALITY INTERACTIONS; CHILD WELL-BEING; EDUCATIONAL DIALOGUES; EMERGING INDICATORS)
• Brief explanations based on the quality indicators about why were the teacher practices from the clip considered high-quality
• Short clips highlighting particular quality indicators
• Additional resources

The materials were designed to be used with flexibility, according to the user preferences and interests.

Because the videos are currently stored in a different site, you will have to login into each video after logging into the website. If you are using a private computer, we recommend you allow your browser to save the login information to facilitate access. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The videoclips were selected based on a set of quality indicators derived from well-established observational measures (CLASS & The Leuven Scale for Well-being and Involvement); qualitative analyses of educational dialogues among teachers and children, and quality indicators that emerged in the scope of the CARE research project.

For an overview of the measures, please see CARE report 2.3: 'Multiple case study in seven European countries regarding culture-sensitive classroom quality assessment'.

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A.    CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT SCORING SYSTEM (CLASS)

The CLASS (La Paro, Hamre, & Pianta, 2012; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008) is a well-developed, theory-based standard observation scale that assesses the quality of teacher–child interactions. It has been used in several European countries, namely Finland, (Pakarinen et al., 2010), Portugal (Cadima et al., 2016a, 2016b), Netherlands (Slot, Leseman, Verhagen, & Mulder, 2015) and Germany (Suchodoletz, Fäsche, Gunzenhauser, & Hamre, 2014), with empirical evidence suggesting its usefulness and relevance to capture important aspects of teacher-child interactions in European ECEC settings.
The CLASS includes several quality indicators, grouped into two categories as follows:

A.1 Emotional and Behavioral Support

• Positive climate: Warmth, enjoyment, and respect displayed by teachers and children
• Teacher sensitivity:Comfort, encouragement and responsiveness to children's needs
• Regard for child perspectives:Emphasis on children's views and encouragement of independence
• Behavior management:Effective methods to monitor, prevent and redirect misbehavior
• Instructional learning formats:Maximization of child engagement

A.2 Engaged Support for Learning

• Facilitation of Learning & Development/Concept Development: Facilitation of children’s learning through encouragement of analysis and reasoning, critical thinking and creativity, and through connections to the real world, and integration with prior knowledge
• Quality of feedback: Feedback that extends children's learning and understanding
• Language modeling: Language-stimulation and language-facilitation techniques

B. THE LEUVEN SCALE FOR WELL-BEING AND INVOLVEMENT

The tool is an observational measure that focuses on two central indicators of quality in ECEC settings from the perspective of the child: child well-being and involvement (Laevers, 2003). This measure has been developed in Belgium and has been disseminated across several countries, including Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Portugal.

B.1. Child well-being

Well-being is evident when children’s basic needs are satisfied and refers to the extent to which children feel at ease, act spontaneously, free of emotional tensions, and show self-confidence. Child well-being can be expressed in various ways, namely, enjoyment (e.g., children are having fun, smile, and laugh, taking pleasure in interacting with others); relaxing (open facial expressions); vitality (e.g., children’s look is lively and expressive; openness (e.g, children are open and happy with the attention they receive); self-confidence.

B.2. Child involvement

Involvement is considered to be a necessary condition for deep level learning and development and refers to the extent to which children are concentrated, focused, interested and fascinated in the activities. Child well-being can be expressed in various ways, namely, motivation (e.g., a child being truly interested and driven to engage in a task or activity); intense mental activity; satisfaction; exploratory drive; and at the limits of child capabilities.

C. EDUCATIONAL DIALOGUES (Alexander, 2006; Muhonen et al., 2016)

An episode of educational dialogue is defined as a segment of an extended exchange between the teacher and children, in which the topic continues to be essentially the same. Further, each episode must manifests three of the five principles of dialogic teaching (Alexander, 2006):

• purposefulness (teachers plan and steer classroom talk with specific educational goals in mind);
• collectiveness (teachers and children address learning tasks/topics together as a small group or as a the whole classroom) 
• reciprocity (teachers and children listen to each other, share ideas and consider alternative viewpoints)

Choosing to use the aforementioned three criteria is founded on the work by Muhonen et al. (2016), who has gathered empirical evidence on the validity of exploring dialogues with 6–8-year-old children.

D. EMERGING INDICATORS from CARE-WP2 qualitative analysis

The international application of standard-based measures to assess ECEC quality raises crucial questions about the cultural complexities and the problematic validity of instruments migrating out of their cultural cradle. 

Within the European study CARE and a national extension, a qualitative study has developed a critical-cultural approach to the Classroom Assessment Scoring System. In three countries (Italy, Portugal and The Netherlands) ECEC experts and teachers form the centres involved in the video-clips construction have been involved in focused discussions of the CLASS recognizing elements of continuity, differences and disagreements and key-features of the teacher-child relationship not captured by the tool.

Results offer interesting insights to a methodological reflection on the international use of standardized evaluation tools and to a theoretical reflection on ‘universal vs culture-related’ views on education and quality.

Emerging dimensions/indicators listed below come from this study.

(See also: Pastori G., Pagani V., Is validation always valid? Cross cultural complexities of standard-based instruments migrating out of their context, forthcoming in European Early Childhood Education Journal).

D.1. Promoting the child as a resource and active protagonist:

Children are resources and a high-quality teacher-child relationship takes place where the adult supports their active role and their competence to share and co-construct projects and activities, knowledge, products, or to discuss social rules. It is an overall pedagogical approach, not a limited attention dedicated to a child or a group of children’s point of view during a single dialogue or just during a specific activity. This idea is in tune with the idea of ‘emerging curriculum’ and with the conceptualizaton of the teacher as ‘enabler’ and ‘scaffolder’.

D.2. Fostering peer interaction as a key-trigger for learning:

Peer interaction is a key-factor in promoting children’s learning and socio-cognitive development. Teachers intentionally foster peer interactions, socialization, reciprocal support and learning, as a quality indicator of teacher-child/children interactions.

D.3. Fostering social and emotional competences as learning (and developmental) goals:

Learning is not solely cognitive and linguistic, a broader vision of learning embraces children’s socio-emotional development and the role of teachers in fostering it providing children with opportunities to learn to cooperate, to be responsible for others (social-skills), to be part of a group, of a community (sense of belonging), to regulate their emotions and to understand and recognize those of others (emotional regulation and competence), to acquire basic life skills,.

D.4. Intercultural & inclusive competence as a key quality teacher competence and learning goal:

Intercultural and inclusive competence is an essential aspect of classroom quality. Teachers should promote inclusion, encouraging children to be aware of and respect all forms of diversity and difference, between individuals and groups, and giving them opportunities to learn to deal with and respect diversity.

D.5. Implementing non-intervention strategies:

Teachers need to be aware of children’s needs, concerns, conflicts and unacceptable behaviours. However, an effective teacher should refrain from acting always at the first signal from the child. Rather, he/she should take enough time to observe the child and the peers’ reactions before deciding if and how to intervene. 

This idea is in tune with a conceptualization of the teacher as a reflective professional, whose professionalism lies, indeed, in his/her ability to question, reflect and observe children and their own educational practices. It is also in tune with the idea that children have resources to overcome obstacles (such as conflicts) and the adult can support their implementation and development monitoring and non-intervening.

• CLASS Emotional and Behavioral Support
• CLASS Engaged Support for Learning
• Well-being and involvement
• Educational dialogues
• Emerging indicators

A detailed description of the procedures used to conduct the video observations is provided in the CARE report 2.3: Multiple case study in seven European countries regarding culture-sensitive classroom quality assessment.

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Authors (main authors in bold):       

• Joana Cadima, Clara Barata, & Cecília Aguiar (Portugal)
• Jenni Salminen (Finland)
• Giulia Pastori (Italy)
• Pauline Slot (the Netherlands)
• Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen (Finland)

Research team responsible for the video-clip recording, selecting, and editing and for the presentation of the centers and clips:

ENGLAND

Researchers: Kathy Sylva; Katharina Ereky-Stevens; Alice Tawell

FINLAND

Researchers: Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen; Jenni Salminen

GERMANY

Researchers: Yvonne Anders; Franziska Wilke

ITALY

University of Milan-Bicocca - Department of Human Sciences of Education R.Massa

Scientific Supervisor: prof.sa Susanna  Mantovani,

Research Coordinator: dott.sa Giulia Pastori

Research Collaborators: dott.sa Piera Braga, dott.sa Valentina Pagani

Technical expert: dott. Cristiano Mutti

Translation: Jennifer Coe

Teachers involved as protagonists of the clips and in the video selection process:

Case 1:

Elisa Molteni

Debora Acquaviva

Sabrina Croci

Cleo De Carli

Laura Magnani

Contacts:

Giulia Pastori – giulia.pastori@unimib.it

Piera Braga – piera.braga@unimib.it

Teachers Case 1: bambinibicocca@unimib.it

NETHERLANDS

Researchers: Paul Leseman; Pauline Slot

POLAND

Researchers: Małgorzata Karwowska-Struczyk; Olga Wyslowska

PORTUGAL

Researchers: Joana Cadima, Cecília Aguiar, Clara Barata

Research Collaborators: Carolina Guedes, Teresa Aguiar

Teachers involved in the video library process: Teresa Carvalho, Joana Tavares, Nubimar Santos, Ivone Monteiro, Catarina Baptista, Sílvia Bereny, Isabel Barros