Enabling children to participate and be involved in various everyday environments has been raised in general social debate, in speeches by experts in education, social work and rehabilitation. A child’s participation and joining in activities is possible when the child has sufficient skills to participate in meaningful and appropriate activities for him or her and when the environment takes into account his or her initiatives and, if necessary, supports the child’s activities. A child needs the right kind of guidance and support from an adult, which is adapted to his or her skill level. New skills are learned when the child is allowed to do things himself or herself – including making mistakes.

Participation is built both on participation in everyday activities and on the experience of belonging. A child’s participation is enabled by sufficient everyday skills, a positive perception of themselves as an actor, and the opportunity to realize their own choices and interests in everyday environments.

Play as a forum for participation

Playing with friends is an excellent forum for practicing a variety of life skills. The Early Childhood Education Act and the Early Childhood Education Curriculum also emphasize the importance of play for a child’s learning. Play is seen as a motivating and joyful activity in which children learn many skills and absorb information at the same time. Early childhood education must create an operating culture that encourages play. The educator must identify factors that limit play and develop operating methods and learning environments that promote play.

Observation of play and friendship skills is a way to identify a child’s skills and describe the strengths and challenges they face. Identifying strengths and challenges is a prerequisite for being able to plan pedagogical interventions to support skill learning and enable the participation of all children.

Observation as a method in educational work

In addition to subjective knowledge of the child, objective observation and systematic recording of observations are always needed. The information collected as observations is always either subjective perceptions of the situation or objective information recorded using a structured method.

To guarantee the equality and quality of services provided in the field of early childhood education and rehabilitation, in addition to subjective experiences, expert work must strive for objective observation of children’s skills and fair documentation of observations. The requirement for objectivity is met by using researched and reliable observation methods. With the help of a reliable method, the observer focuses attention on what he sees, without immediately interpreting the reasons why the child acts in a certain way. A good observation method requires the persistence of observations so that the use of the method does not depend on the observer’s perspective, but works the same regardless of the observer.

Observing children’s participation in activities is not about assessing the individual’s capabilities, but rather the environment and the activities being observed always affect the child’s ability to use their own skills. Therefore, exceptions that occur in the environment must also be recorded.

When subjective experiences of the child’s everyday life are gathered to support objective observations, parents also play a key role in providing insights into the child’s current skills and potential problems. The child is also asked about his or her own views on his or her own skills, interests and problems. The child’s right to participate and have influence on matters affecting him or her is highlighted, for example, in the Early Childhood Education Act (2018, Section 3). The child’s own self-assessment brings out his or her own subjective perspective on what he or she wants to do and learn.

Observation challenges

When I ask educators what observation methods they use to observe children’s play activities, the absolute number one choice is free observation. Free observation gives a skilled observer valuable information about the child’s activities, but the challenge remains what to document from the observations and how to monitor the development of the child’s skills. The educator receives valuable and personal information for planning their own work, but how is the information transmitted to the entire work team or family and other adults who may work with the child? When a child has problems with their learning, the starting point for planning effective interventions is always the systematic documentation of the observation data in a comparable form.

The documentation of subjective free observations generally takes the form of a qualitative description of the child’s activities. A qualitative description does not usually concern what happened but includes the educator’s interpretation of the situation. Being able to make objective observations, and especially recording them, requires the educator to practice and use structured tools. Documentation requires accuracy and comparability, and sometimes also measurability. I would like to bring up the idea of ​​fair documentation in this discussion. Consider what kind of recordings you have made of your child’s activities recently. Do you think you have described the activities accurately enough so that the reader also gets a clear picture of the child’s skills at that moment? So how does a qualitative description of activities meet the demands of fairness and equality have been one of the subjects of my research.

When the goal is to objectively collect information about the object of observation, researched observation methods should be used. Focus on what you see. Do not immediately interpret, but compile and score your observations according to the criteria described in the method.

Reliable documentation as part of the decision-making process

When we document our observations, we always produce official traces of information about the child. This requires a critical examination of the type of information we record. Expert work should therefore always use the best possible data collection methods available. The observation methods or tools we use should also be reliable.

A reliable and researched structure of an observation tool is always based on a defined theoretical concept analysis (concept validity). It is therefore necessary to know precisely whether the method produces the information it is intended to produce. For example, skill in play is a latent characteristic that cannot be directly observed. Skillful play first had to be conceptualized and decomposed into indicators that describe it. The correctness of the theoretical structure of the observation method must be investigated by collecting sufficient observations made in everyday life and using statistical analysis to show that the assumed theoretical structure of the method (structural validity) also works in practice.

Research can therefore show that a method assesses exactly what it was developed for. However, this is not enough; the method must work the same way when implemented by all observers (inter-rater reliability) and be repeatable from one situation to another (test-retest reliability). So whenever you find a new interesting observation method or form, check that it meets at least the first three properties. If you also want to use the method to demonstrate change, the method must be able to differentiate between children at different skill levels and the test-retest reliability must be reasonable.

Observing and describing activity and participation skills is challenging, but important when planning timely pedagogical interventions, especially when a child needs enhanced or special support. Especially when considering access to services and equitable targeting, decision-making should be based on reliable and comparable documentation.

As an early childhood educator, you work in children’s everyday lives and spend a large part of a child’s daily waking hours with them. You are on the front line, observing a child’s strengths and possible support needs. By systematically observing play and friendship skills, you are able to plan and implement goal-oriented educational work.

Reliable observation helps you address and discuss your child’s potential challenges, as well as set more specific growth and learning goals in collaboration with parents.

From early childhood education research to a tool for practical work

In my own research, I have been particularly familiar with the observation of children’s activities and the development of reliable observation methods. My interest has been in the observation of children’s play skills and the assessment of daily activities and activities. In order for the information produced by the research to be useful for early childhood education and rehabilitation experts, the methods require not only reliability, but also modeled analysis to help interpret and report the results. This is best possible by producing a digital application for the user of the methods, which can perform the same analysis that the researcher does on his or her own computer. I did not want the researcher’s work to remain gathering dust on a library shelf, because the development of play assessment, the subject of my research, was born from the need for everyday work. The story of RALLA began with my doctoral dissertation and led to the founding of the company in 2016 through the product development process.

I previously worked in the rehabilitation of children, working with my client’s children who could not play. My job was to learn to play together with them. In my research, I also wanted to show that learning to play through rehabilitation is worthwhile. However, I did not have a suitable reliable method at my disposal to demonstrate the effectiveness of my work. My doctoral dissertation focused on developing a play observation method. After completing the research, I wondered how to get the play analysis model I had developed from the computer in my research room into a tool for everyday work. The solution was not only to write and publish the RALLA manual, but also to have researcher Vilja Laaksonen present her RALLA dissertation. Now, RALLA is a product family suitable not only for assessing play skills, but also for assessing peer skills, and for assessing children’s activities and participation in children’s everyday life. RALLA tools are based on research and are reliable tools for observing children’s skills.

RALLA tools can be used to observe strengths and challenges in play and friendship skills. The RALLA application analyzes the results of the observation and the printable reports summarize the results of the observation and help plan pedagogical and rehabilitative goals for the development of the child’s skills and enabling everyday participation.

Tiina Lautamo

Sources:

Imms, C., Granlund, M., Wilson, P.H., Steenberg, B., Rosenbaum, P.L. ja Gordon, A.M. 2017. Participation, both a means and an end: conseptual analysis of processes and outcomes in childhood disability. Developmental medicine & childhood neurology, 59: 16-25.

Laaksonen, V. 2014. Lasten vertaissuhdetaidot ja kiusaaminen esikoulun vertaisryhmissä. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän yliopisto. Viitattu 1.9.2018. https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/bitstream/handle/123456789.

Lautamo, T. ja Laaksonen V. 2018 (2. painos). RALLA leikki- ja kaveritaitojen havainnointimenetelmät. Keuruu: Ralla Oy.

Lautamo, T. ja Laaksonen V. 2018 RALLA – sovellus 2.0. Jyväskylä: Ralla Oy, Saatavilla: http://ralla.fi/index.php/kauppa/

Lautamo, T. 2012. Play Assessment for Group Settings. Validating a Measurement Tool for Assessment of Children’s Play Performance in the Day-Care Context. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän yliopisto. Viitattu 1.9.2018. https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/bitstream/handle/123456789.

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