Designing a Scale to Assess Dialectical Thinking: Link to ECERS-R Items

Area of Science:

• Early Childhood Education
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Assessment

Background:

• Dialectical thinking is increasingly recognized as vital for preschool child development.
• Current assessment tools for preschool quality, such as the ECERS-R, do not specifically evaluate the support for dialectical thinking.
• There is a need for a specialized instrument to measure the educational environment's impact on dialectical thinking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and validate a tool for assessing the extent to which preschool educational environments support dialectical thinking in children.
• To compare the effectiveness of the new tool with an existing measure (ECERS-R).

Main Methods:

• Development and statistical justification of the dialectical thinking support (DTS) scale.
• Comparative analysis of DTS scale scores against ECERS-R scores in 18 preschool groups.
• Examination of specific ECERS-R subscales in relation to dialectical thinking support.

Main Results:

• The ECERS-R scale does not distinguish between the stimulation of dialectical and formally logical thinking.
• Certain ECERS-R scores (e.g., "Stimulating Communication," "Books and Illustrations") may correlate with lower support for dialectical thinking.
• A positive association was found between the ECERS-R score "Care-Giver and Children Interaction" and the DTS scale.

Conclusions:

• The newly developed DTS scale is a statistically validated tool for measuring dialectical thinking support in preschool settings.
• Findings suggest that some common preschool quality indicators may not foster dialectical thinking.
• Further research is warranted to explore the links between dialectical thinking, voluntariness, and the emotional sphere in children.