Assessing Inclusion Quality in Early Learning and Child Care

Executive Summary Recent advances in policy development and professional practice in the field of early childhood education and care have led to the expectation that it is appropriate and advantageous to include children with disabilities (special needs) in community-based early child care and learning programs. As more efforts are made to provide opportunities for young children with special needs to participate in inclusive programs, it is imperative that steps are taken to ensure that children and their parents benefit from programs that exemplify high overall quality and also address each child's unique needs. To date, evidence-based research of the effects of experiences in inclusive programs on children's development and parent support have been hampered by the lack of appropriate measures to assess inclusion quality in community-based programs that are reliable, valid, and relatively easy to administer by trained early childhood professionals. The main purpose of this study was to examine the internal reliability and structural properties of the SpeciaLink Inclusion Principles Scale and Inclusion Practices Profile (recently combined in the SpeciaLink Early Childhood Inclusion Quality Scale 2009) as two new measures to assess inclusion quality, and to provide initial evidence of their validity. This technical report provides strong evidence for the utility and reliability of both SpeciaLink Inclusion measures when used together as measures of inclusion quality. Furthermore, both measures predict centre directors' global ratings of their centre's effectiveness in including children with special needs. Inclusion Principles and Practices scores were available from almost 600 classrooms drawn from a purposive, voluntary sample of 216 child care centres and preschool programs across Canada. The data were obtained often as part of ongoing initiatives to improve program quality and enhance inclusion effectiveness, with observations scored by assessors who were trained for this purpose. Analyses supported the following conclusions: 1. The SpeciaLink Inclusion Principles Scale assesses the extent to which early learning programs have consciously adopted a set of principles that reflect a strong commitment to include all children in the community, to ensure their full participation in the program, and to support their parents as full partners. Significantly higher scores were obtained on each Principles item and on the average Principles Scale score for classrooms located in Assessing Inclusion Quality in Early Learning and Child Care 3 inclusive centres compared to classrooms in centres that did not enrol any children with special needs. The largest difference between these groups was evident for …