Early Childhood Research Institute on Measuring Growth
and Development: Developing General Outcome
& Measures (GOMs) for Young Children
ABSTRACT
What Are GOMs?
GOMs are measures designed to reflect a child’s progress toward an identified general outcome (e.g., communication, movement, etc.). Central to the content development of a GOM is repeated measurement of the same key skill elements. A child’s increasing proficiency toward a valued outcome is detected by examining rates of growth on a set of key skill elements performance that are repeatedly measured.
Other examples of GOMs include height and weight charts as used in pediatric medicine or Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) used to measure students’ progress in basic reading and math skills. Each of these GOM approaches allows practitioners to monitor progress by detecting when an individual child is falling below growth expectation, when intervention is needed, whether or not an intervention is effectively moving the child toward the desired outcome, and if not, that a change is needed to accelerate growth (Deno, 1997).
Working with colleagues at the University of Minnesota and the University of Oregon, researchers at the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project are developing GOMs for children from birth through 8 years to monitor children’s progress toward the outcomes of <u>expressive communication, movement, social interaction, literacy, problem-solving, and adaptive behavior.
Who Should Use GOMs?
Any interventionist that needs to determine whether intervention strategies are changing a childs rate of growth toward valued outcomes.
Any early childhood program that seeks to establish whether the program is moving children toward outcomes validated for all young children.
What Problem Do GOMs Address?
Few measures are available that assist professionals working in early childhood programs (practitioners) determine whether children are on-course in making developmental progress toward meaningful outcomes. Using GOMs professionals can:
- Monitor all children’s progress in a program
- Identify need for more in-depth assessment and intervention
- Evaluate effectiveness of intervention by tracking child growth
How Do We Know GOMs Work?
We know that GOMs developed for older children (such as DIBELS-Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy Skills) are sensitive to grade level and predictive of early literacy status (Good & Kaminski, 1996; Kaminski & Good, 1996). Similarly, newly developed GOMs in expressive language (Luze et al., 2001) and movement for children from birth to three years have been shown to be:
- Reliable and Valid
- Sensitive to growth over time
-
Relatively easy to use.
Materials Available:
Field-test versions are available for the following GOMs:
- for expressive communication and movement for children for infants and toddlers are available from Juniper Gardens Children & Project (Judith Carta or Charles Greenwood, Principal Investigators)
- for expressive communication and early literacy for preschoolers from the University of Minnesota (Scott McConnell or Mary McEvoy,&
Principal Investigators)
- for expressive communication and early literacy for children
from kindergarten to 1st grade from the University of Oregon
(Ruth Kaminski or Roland Good, Principal Investigators)
Training Available:
Yes. Contact Principal Investigators listed above.
More information is available at:
the website for the EARLY CHILDHOOD RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR MEASURING GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT:
http://education.umn.edu/ceed/projects/ecri/scott.html
At Juniper Gardens Children's Project:
Judith J. Carta or Charles R. Greenwood
