Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale
Harms, Thelma and Cryer, Debby and Clifford, Richard M. (1990).
New York: Teachers College Press; $8.95. ISBN 0807730106.
In much of the “environmental” and social science literature, even when the construct of “environment” is invoked, it is most often limited to the effects of the social environment (e.g., amount and quality of adult interaction with children) and not the physical and/ or designed environment. Conversely, those working in the environmental professions tend to ignore the role of the social environment and often espouse, if unconsciously, an environmental deterministic position.
Where in this continuum does the very well known Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS) lie?
The ITERS is part of the family of child care rating scales developed by Thelma Harms, Richard Clifford, and their colleagues at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The three scales- the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale for group-based child care centers (Harms and Clifford 1980), the Family Day Care Rating Scale for family day care homes (Harms and Clifford 1989), and the ITERS -are a major contribution to child care literature. Together with Caldwell and Bradley's HOME scales (1982) and Abbott-Shim and Sibley's assessment profiles (1987), they are the best known and likely the most widely used scales to assess quality child care.
The ITERS, developed by Harms, Debby Cryer, and Clifford, consists of 35 items organized into seven sub-scales. It is intended for the assessment of the quality of center-based infant and toddler care for children up to 30 months of age. It is based on a broad definition of child care environments, and includes not only what the authors call the organization of space but also interaction, activities, schedule, and provisions. It is as comprehensive as any scale available for the assessment of child care.
Many so-called scales are developed and promulgated in informal literature without adequate study of their reliability and validity. Several studies of the psychometric properties of the ITERS were conducted and reported in 1989. In particular, Clifford and his colleagues found that inter-rater and test-retest reliability were in the range of r = 0.58-0.89, internal consistency was a = 0.83, criterion validity was 83 percent, and content validity was 75-86 percent. All of these figures are quite respectable, enough so that Columbia University's Teachers College Press has published the scale.
Thus, the scale is reliable and is valid vis-à-vis other available scales and experts' opinions. But is it environmental?
First, I did a quantitative content analysis of the scale. Of the 35 items, 14 have some environmental content (i.e., that part of the total physical environment that can be manipulated architecturally). For example, the item “furnishing for routine care” includes numbers of pieces of furniture, comfort, support, and storage.
However, of the 396 detailed descriptors that are used to score a center on the scale items (e.g., “diapering done near source of hot water” or “nap is scheduled appropriately for each child”), only 35, or 8.8 percent have any physical environmental content that could help one assess the physical environment of the facility itself. Some of these descriptors are very good, like (undoubtedly based on the work of Elizabeth Prescott) requiring softness and cozy, special areas for high scores on “furnishing for relaxation and comfort” and (perhaps based on the work of Fred Osmon) correlating quality child care with the separation of activity areas from circulation.
In other places the environmental characteristics of a test item are confounded with the behavioral use patterns. For example, “furnishings permit appropriate independence for toddlers (e.g., toddlers use small chairs...).” Which is being assessed, the environmental characteristic (the character of the furnishings themselves) or the behavioral use pattern (toddlers use of small chairs)? This usage could be influenced not only by the characteristics of the furniture but also by staff, the types of games that are played, etc.
In still other places, the scale is surprisingly silent on important issues about the physical environment of infant and toddler centers. For instance, items like “nap” do not contain any reference to whether napping should be in separate nap rooms, in double-functioning nap-play rooms, or in partially partitioned napping spaces. The scale is silent on this important physical environmental issue. Similarly, under “room arrangement,” the scale seems uncritically to assume one overall organizational pattern for infant-toddler centers- the box-car arrangement of a double-loaded corridor with self-contained classrooms. The scale is silent on the pros and cons of alternative organizational patterns, despite the existence of research literature documenting the relative advantages and disadvantages of different spatial layouts, such as “modified open space” (cf. review in Moore 1987). It may be that the procedure of calculating validity by comparison with other scales and a small panel of experts is an inherently conservative process.
Additionally, under “greeting/departing,” the scale is silent about the characteristics of the environment that might aid greeting and departing. Similarly, under “meals/snacks,” the scale does not discuss the pros and cons of centralized industrialized kitchens (a major expense for any child care center) versus what we have been calling since 1979 “children in the kitchen” (Moore et al. 1979; 1994).
The scale is very good about the necessity for a variety of play areas for infants and toddlers (art, music and movement, blocks, pretend play, even sand and water play for toddlers), but again is silent on the environmental characteristics of infant-toddler centers that will facilitate these types of developmentally appropriate play activities.
“Areas for quiet and active play separated (ex.- by low shelves)” is an indicator of good room arrangement. A more sophisticated notion would be “zoning” (Moore et al. 1982), a standard operating procedure of any architect. Also related to the goodness of room arrangement is the item “young infants given space and materials to explore while protected from more mobile children.” No one would disagree about the necessity for safety, but the scale is silent on age mixing, so much a part of many progressive approaches to child care (cf. Lilian Katz et al. 1990) and ways in which the environment might aid age mixing without creating safety problems.
On the items measuring “peer interaction,” not one descriptor relates to the designed environment. However, we have found child-child interaction to be a function of plan type (reported in Carol Weinstein and Tom David's 1987 Spaces for Children). All other things being equal, modified open-plan centers evidence almost twice the degree of social interaction among children than do open-plan centers. Similarly, regarding “care giver-child interaction,” where again no descriptor relates to the physical setting, we have found significantly more care giver involvement with children in spatially well-defined activity settings than in moderately defined or poorly defined ones (Moore 1986). It would seem valuable to add to the ITERS scale items reflecting these findings about the role of the physical environment in quality child care.
The ITERS scale is also strangely silent on a number of other environmental issues with which architects and other designers are confronted, as well as those faced by center directors each time they consider the facility program for a new or renovated center. Among these are location, size, scale, image, circulation, and character of the outdoor activity areas.
Lastly, one example of how such a scale might be revised and modified to incorporate more environmental content would be a requirement for a variety of activity areas, as well as specifications for their supportive environmental characteristics. The environmental notion of “resource-rich activity areas” was transformed a number of years before the ITERS into a preliminary environmental scale for the “organization and character of individual areas” (Moore 1982; 1994). On a larger scale, the organization of the space of the center as a whole was made into a preliminary scale for research purposes only. The two were labeled the Early Childhood Physical Environment Scales and are available from the author. Each is composed of ten items which, like the ITERS, are measured on a five-point Likert-type scale, which ranges from descriptors like “visual connections to other activity spaces” to “lack of connections,” or “degree of connection between indoor and outdoor activity spaces.”
References
Abbott-Shim, M. and A. Sibley (1987/1992). Assessment Profile for Early Childhood Programs (rev. ed., 1992). Atlanta: Quality Assist.
Caldwell, B. M. and R.H. Bradley (1982). HOME Observation for Measurement of the Environment. Little Rock, AK: University of Arkansas, Center for Child Development and Education.
Harms, T. and R.M. Clifford (1980). Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale. New York: Teachers College Press.
Harms, T. and R.M. Clifford (1989). The Family Day Care Rating Scale. New York: Teachers College Press.
Harms, T ., D. Cryer, and R.M. Clifford (1990). The Infant/Toddler Day Care Rating Scale. New York: Teachers College Press.
Katz, L.G., D. Evangelou, and I.A. Hartman (1990). The Case for Mixed-Age Groups in Early Education. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Moore, G.T. (1982/1994). Early Childhood Physical Environment Schedules and Rating Scales (2nd edition, 1994). Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Center for Architecture and Urban Planning Research.
Moore, G.T. (1986). “Effects of the Spatial Definition of Behavior Settings on Children's Behavior: A Quasi-Experimental Field Study.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 6(3), 205-231.
Moore, G.T. (1987). “The Physical Environment and Cognitive Development in Childcare Centers.” In C.S. Weinstein and T.G. David (eds.), Spaces for Children. New York: Plenum Press, p. 41-72.
Moore,.G.T., U. Cohen, B.T. Armstrong, and T. McGinty (1982). “The Spatial Organization of an Early Childhood Development Center: Open Space, Zoning, and Circulation.” Day Care Journal, Fall, 1(2), 35-38.
Moore, G.T., C.G. Lane, A.B. Hill, U. Cohen, and T. McGinty (1971/1994). Recommendations for Child Care Centers (3rd edition, 1994). Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Center for Architecture and Urban Planning Research.
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