Programme effects on academic achievement

Question : 2) What are the programme‟s effects on the achievement of preschool children in the academic domain ?

131 The measurements used in the collection of data on academic achievement were the academic/cognitive domain assessment of the standardised Brigance Diagnostic Inventory of Early Development II (IED-II) (Brigance, 2008) and a criterion reference measure on reading assessment at the preprimer level and basic mathematics from the same inventory, known as Brigance 2 in this research study.

3.7.2 Description of Brigance Diagnostic Inventory of Early Development II (IED –II)

The Brigance Diagnostic Inventory of Early Development II has been standardised and validated for children from birth to seven years of age. It is widely used for diagnostic as well as for determining readiness for school. This includes tracking developmental progress, providing a range of scores needed for documenting eligibility for special education services, comparing children‟s skills within and across developmental domains in order to view strengths and weaknesses, determining entry points for instruction and assisting with programme evaluation (Glascoe, 2004). The skills being assessed are derived from 6 developmental domains : fine motor skills, gross motor skills, receptive and expressive language, academic/ cognitive, daily living and social emotional.

3.7.3 The use of Brigance Diagnostic Inventory of Early Development (IED-II)

in studies of preschool children.

Internal consistency that relate to the developmental domains of motor skills, social- emotional, language, academic/cognitive and daily living, was established in 1991 via a large standardization study of 1156 children from 12 months to 7 years of age from the U.S population. Coefficient alpha was produced for each task of the IED. The internal consistency ranged from .85 to .99. There was also evidence of test and retest reliability that ranged from .82 to 1.00, when the 1156 children were tested twice. The inter-rater reliability ranged from .82 to .96. Hence Brigance (IED-II) is a highly reliable tool with high degree of internal consistency, test and retest reliability and inter-rater reliability (Glascoe, 2004).

132 The IED-II is considered to have strong content validity. Items selected by a pool of educators and psychologists were drawn from research and other measures. The IED-II also demonstrates desirable age related trends where younger children have lower scores than do older children administered the same subtests. IED-II has very good concurrent validity where the domains, subdomains and subtests are highly correlated with diagnostic measures of development, academic performance, and intelligence and teacher/examiner rating. IED-II has a high degree of discriminant validity where children with and without disabilities and risk factors for developmental problems including prematurity, score significantly differently on this measure. IED-II is considered to be non discriminatory with regards to ethnicity but is responsive to known psychosocial risk factors including parental level of education and poverty. IED-II predictive validity showed strong and high correlations six months to two years later with criterion measures of intelligence, academic achievement , family environment, language development and teacher ratings (Glascoe, 2004).

In a study by Mantzicopoulos (2000), Brigance was used in the early detection of Head Start children with possible cognitive/academic giftedness. The data was collected from a sample of 134 children and 13 of whom were identified as potentially gifted based on their performance on the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC). Similar to results of K-ABC, the potentially gifted children performed significantly better on the Brigance than the non-gifted children. The results of this study provided support for the use of Brigance in the early identification of economically disadvantaged children with possible cognitive/academic giftedness.

Unruh and Dupree (1998) used IED to evaluate the effects of Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment (IE) with 4 to 5 year old children who were diagnosed with receptive and expressive language disabilities. The IED was used during pre and post test and the results indicated that the children‟s scores showed significant gains from pre to post test performance on all three subtests (i.e., general

133 knowledge, receptive language and expressive language). These results were consistent with the children‟s performance on the Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scales.

3.7.4 Rationale for the choice of Brigance Diagnostic Inventory of Early Development (IED-II) for my study.

The skills being assessed in Brigance (IED-II) are derived from 6 developmental domains. However, for the purpose of my study, only the academic/cognitive domain was used to collect data on children‟s academic progress (see Appendix B).

Brigance IED-II academic/cognitive domain yields information on children‟s basic numeracy and literacy skills which are foundational to their academic progress and performance. In the academic/cognitive domain, the following sub areas are covered:

Table 3.4

Subdomains of academic/ cognitive domain

Quantitative Pre-reading and reading

Number concepts Visual discrimination Rote counting Rote recitation of alphabets

Money Lower case letter knowledge

Numerical comprehension Ordinal position

Sounds of lower case letters Auditory discrimination

Colour knowledge Survival sight words

Basic preprimer vocabulary

The investigator has included an additional criterion reference measure from the IED-II on reading assessment at the preprimer level and mathematical skills that were relevant to the children in local context, where the standard was higher compared with other countries. The reading passage contained 33 words from the

134 Harris-Jacobson (1974) word list. For mathematics, the criterion reference measures included write following and preceding numerals, rote count backwards within the range of 20, read number words and identify numerals within the range of 100 from the IED-II. The above criterion measures, known as Brigance 2 in this study, were used to collect data on the academic progress of the children in the study.

3.7.5 Procedures for administering IED-II :

For administering the standardised assessment in the academic/cognitive domain of IED-II, the investigator followed the instructions stated in the examiner‟s book (see Appendix H for procedures for administering academic/cognitive domain of Brigance IED-II). For assessing the additional criterion referenced measures in reading and mathematical skills from IED-II, each child was asked to read the pre- primer passage which consists of 33 words from the Harris Jacobson (1974) word list and complete the mathematical tasks of writing following and preceding numerals, rote count backwards within the range of 20, reads number words and identify numerals within the range of 100 (see Appendix C) for a copy of the additional criterion referenced measures in reading and math skills.