SBIR Phase II: Facilitating Early Childhood Teacher and Family Engagement During COVID-19

SBIR 第二阶段：在 COVID-19 期间促进幼儿教师和家庭的参与

• 批准号: 2151349
• 负责人: Tammy Kwan
• 金额: $ 96.49万
• 依托单位: Cognitive ToyBox
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-07-15 至 2026-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2151349&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Facilitating; Early

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to ease the burden on early childhood teachers and ensure they have the information needed to support children’s learning. COVID-19 has upended the lives of millions of children and families and disproportionately affected low-income children. The incoming class of preschoolers have increasingly variable levels of development and skills than ever before, and educators need to assess their need and help them to catch up academically. The industry leading tools in early childhood assessment rely solely on observation-based assessment, in which teachers make judgments about a child’s performance based on observations made in the classroom. Observation-based measures have limitations, including time burden, teacher bias, and variability in scoring due to differences in teacher education and training. Observational assessment is especially challenging in the remote context, since teachers were not able to physically monitor children’s development. Even when children are back in the classroom, face masks may shield some of the more subtle cues around learning and development.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to ensure an accurate assessment of child development, so that teachers can leverage the data for tailored instruction to help children catch up from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Child assessments are typically observational or direct. This Phase II project collects both observational and direct data, providing an opportunity to compare the data and help teachers understand areas where there may be assessment error due to teacher bias or other factors. At the end of Phase II, it is anticipated that teachers will have access to a self-led teacher training and reliability certification, which may help to ensure a more consistent assessment experience in the classroom. Moreover, educational programs will have access to an assessment quality monitoring dashboard that seeks to highlight differences between observation and game-based assessment scores and provide a path towards reconciliation. Educational programs may be able to customize this technology to fit the needs of English language learners, who are often subject to assessor bias. Finally, teachers may be able to leverage the game-based assessments to understand both academic and “soft” skill development. Overall, the technology may\provide teachers with a robust child assessment system that helps them to accurately and efficiently assess whole child development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该小企业创新研究 (SBIR) 第二阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是减轻幼儿教师的负担，并确保他们拥有支持儿童学习所需的信息。COVID-19 已经改变了数百万儿童的生活。和家庭以及受到不成比例影响的低收入儿童的发展水平和技能比以往任何时候都更加参差不齐，教育工作者需要评估他们的需求并帮助他们在学业上赶上行业领先的幼儿评估工具。仅依靠基于观察的评估，即教师根据课堂观察对孩子的表现做出判断。基于观察的评估有其局限性，包括时间负担、教师偏见以及由于教师教育和培训的差异而导致的评分变化。在远程环境中，评估尤其具有挑战性，因为教师无法亲自监测孩子们的发育情况，即使孩子们回到教室，口罩也可能会屏蔽一些有关学习和发展的更微妙的线索。这项小型企业创新研究（ SBIR）第二阶段项目旨在确保对儿童发展进行准确评估，以便教师可以利用数据进行量身定制的指导，帮助儿童摆脱 COVID-19 大流行的影响。第二阶段项目通常收集观察性评估和直接评估。数据，提供比较数据的机会，并帮助教师了解由于教师偏见或其他因素可能存在评估错误的领域。在第二阶段结束时，预计教师将有机会参加自我主导的教师培训。和可靠性认证，这可能有助于确保更一致的评估体验此外，教育项目将能够访问评估质量监控仪表板，该仪表板旨在突出观察和基于游戏的评估分数之间的差异，并提供一条实现协调的途径。最后，教师可以利用基于游戏的评估来了解学术和“软”技能的发展。总体而言，该技术可以为教师提供可靠的儿童评估。系统帮助他们准确有效地评估整个儿童的发展。该奖项反映了通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，NSF 的法定使命被认为值得支持。