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Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Submission Type

Article

Abstract

Abstract

The pandemic has exposed the many glaring difficulties inherent in implementing effective assessment and intervention for young children with neurodevelopmental delays and disabilities in our respective countries, but, especially in the US. The urgency for innovative models of assessment linked to interdisciplinary services and supports in both remote and in-vivo settings became prominent. Yet, the commitment to developmentally-appropriate practice (DAP), assessment linked to intervention, is the hallmark of ECI, whether virtual or in-vivo.

However, interdisciplinary professionals have rallied during these challenging times by displaying creativity, compassion, and superb clinical judgment in providing responsive services via both virtual and in-vivo platforms to families and young children with special needs in rural and urban regions.

Virtual service delivery has required judicious changes in our professional practices using more responsive and less scripted postures. Our family-centered approaches enabled us to engage with parents as partners in assessment and intervention and to plan and deliver supports that were more tailored.

We believe that our “lessons learned” from the pandemic about implementing authentic assessment for early childhood intervention (AA for ECI) among parents and interdisciplinary professionals will make our ongoing partnerships with families and other professionals stronger and more enduring. We hope that this article and the step-by-step model that we have offered will help you in your own professional lives to maintain the outlook that emphasizes the importance of both authentic assessment methods & processes, whether in-vivo or virtual, for undercovering each child’s hidden and true capabilities and needs and by adhering to our enduring commitment to protect children’s inherent human rights.

Keywords: authentic, assessment, best practices, virtual, remote, early childhood intervention

Impact Statement

IMPACT STATEMENT

The pandemic has exposed the many glaring difficulties inherent in the un-systems of care” in our respective countries, especially in the US. Our serving systems are not integrated and the disjointure between physical health and behavioral health services and, certainly, prevention is notable. However, interdisciplinary professionals have rallied during these difficult times by displaying creativity, compassion, and superb clinical judgment in providing responsive services to families and young children who are at developmental risk or with neurodevelopmental disabilities.

During the pandemic, interdisciplinary professionals partnered with families and field-validated new approaches for both assessing the needs of young children and their families in rural and urban regions and, also providing interventions and supports—virtually using Zoom, Teams and other remote platforms. Virtual service delivery has required judicious changes in our professional practices using more responsive and less scripted and administrative postures. Our family-centered approaches enabled us to engage with parents as partners in assessment and intervention and to plan and deliver supports that were more tailored. Authentic Assessment linked to intervention enabled professionals to use multiple sources of information to identify the strengths and needs of young children in their natural environments; we recovered our dormant skills in observation, clinical judgment, mentoring, and family engagement and developed blended models of helping others by coupling virtual and in-vivo strategies for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating the quality and impact of our services.

Our services, worts and all, have become more humanistic and understanding of the stress on families and young children. We believe that our “lessons learned” from the pandemic will make our ongoing partnerships with families and other professionals stronger and more enduring.

We hope that this article on the AA for ECI model based on new research during the pandemic will help you in your own professional lives to maintain the outlook that emphasizes the importance of assessment as a process of undercovering each child’s true capabilities and needs by adhering to the following admonition about children’s inherent human rights:

“Misrepresenting children through mismeasuring them denies children their rights to beneficial expectations and opportunities” (Bagnato & Pretti-Frontczak, 2010).

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