CHILDREN

CONSTRUCT

DIMENSION AND DEFINITION

Self-regulation

Selective attention

Child’s ability to select, within a set of information, which is in fact important, ignoring irrelevant or accessory information.

Inhibitory control

Child’s ability to deliberately inhibit a dominant response and activate a non-dominant one.

Working memory

Child’s ability to retain information in memory while processing other information at the same time.

Language/ Literacy

Oral language is the system by which we communicate ideas and feelings. During the second year of life, children first acquire receptive language and only later, expressive language. Receptive language consists of the content of adult’s dialogue that the child understands, while expressive language is when the child expresses him/ herself using words and, later, sentences.

Social skills

Set of skills that allow children to initiate and sustain positive social and interpersonal relationships. An important aspect of social skills is pro-social behaviour, which refers to actions such as helping, cooperating, sharing and showing empathy towards others’ feelings.

Adult-child relationships (dyadic)

CONSTRUCT

DIMENSION AND DEFINITION

Autonomy

An educator promotes child’s autonomy when he/she recognizes and respects the child’s opinions, supports children’s freedom by offering choices and helping them plan, and proposes activities that are relevant for children.

Closeness

An educator-child close relationship is affectively warm, respectful and mutually satisfying.

Adult-child interactions (group)

CONSTRUCT

DIMENSION AND DEFINITION

Educator-child interactions

The way the educator emotionally supports children (acting as a secure base, being attentive and responsive to their needs, taking into consideration and responding to their interests and motivations), helping them adopt positive behaviours and promoting children’s learning and development (making connections between concepts, encouraging children’s thinking, using their interventions to expand their current levels of knowledge and adopting language promoting strategies).

Peer interactions

CONSTRUCT

DIMENSION AND DEFINITION

Peer relationship and involvement

In classrooms, through their behaviour, children demonstrate important features of their peer relationships, namely if they initiate and sustain peer communication, to what degree they use leadership strategies during play, and if they experience positive peer relationships, or, on the contrary, if they are characterized by conflict and tension.

Classrooms

CONSTRUCT

DIMENSION AND DEFINITION

Activity Setting

Momentary configuration of the classroom activities in terms of content, materials used, level of adult involvement, type of social grouping, and location of the activity.

Structural variables

Aspects related to curriculum, the initial of education of the educator and other team members, adult-child ratios, and group size.