The EU Quality framework for Early Childhood education and care (2019) stress that the necessity to create the condition which enable children to reach their full potential addressing their social, emotional, cognitive and physical development and their wellbeing. Supporting the creative potential of children is one of the important tasks of modern education (PISA, 2021). Preschool education also has a significant resource for supporting creativity (Craft, et al. (2011); Murray, 2022; Borg & Samuelsson, 2022). A number of studies have shown that the development of creative abilities depends on the conditions that are created in the educational environment of the kindergarten. Researchers note a gap between recognizing children as creative and ignoring their creativity in the educational process (Beigi, 2018). One of the effective ways to influence the quality of education is the development of assessment tools that focus on the necessary parameters of the educational environment. In preschool education, priority is given to the assessment of conditions, in particular to standardized scales for assessing the educational environment.

We have developed a tool to assess the quality of the educational environment to support children's creativity – Creative Abilities Support Rating Scale (CASRS).  

This tool is elaborated on the basis of modern theories of creativity (Barbot, Besançon, Lubart, 2016; Guilford, 1967; Lubart & Sternberg, 1995) and a cultural-historical approach to creative abilities, which is based on the works of Vygotskiy (1997), D'yachenko (1996), Podd'yakov (1977), Veraksa (2005). According to this theoretical framework creative abilities includes creative thinking – ability to solve contradictive situations c опорой на диалектическую логику (это позволяетdistinguish creative abilities from formal logical thinking), and creative imagination - ability to create new images and symbols. In both cases, we are talking about solving open divergent problems.

The subscale is based on the idea of ​​amplification of development, which is important for the cultural-historical tradition: we should not accelerate development, but support and develop exactly what is the intrinsic value of childhood – communication, free experimentation, storytelling, creative play, creation of artwork, block design. «Support» means working in the zone of proximal development: creating an intellectual and emotional challenge and enriching environment that encourages invention and experimentation, demonstrating examples of creative behavior of adults to children.

The design of the instrument is similar to that of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) (2015) and Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Well-being (SSTEW) (2015) scale. The CASRS has 4 items, еach reflects one of the relatively independent aspects of creativity: “Understanding of development processes”, “Questioning”, “Invention and transformation of contradictions”, and “Imagination”. 

Each of these indicators contains indicators that evaluate the subject-spatial environment, the distribution of time and the nature of the interaction between children and the teacher.

Like the ECERS and SSTEW, the “Conditions for the development of creative abilities” scale assumes parametric observation, when the expert is in the group for at least three hours. According to the results of the observation, the expert can give points from 1 to 7, where 1-2 points - low quality; 3 points - the minimum level; 4–6 points – good quality; 7 points is an excellent level.

The purpose of this pilot study is checking the reliability and validity of the instrumen t.

We checked the level of reliability of the CASRS by the method of consistency of expert assessments and validity of the CASRS by the method of contrast groups. Validity was also assessed by correlation with the total score on EСERS. The reliability control study was carried out by interrater agreement method (including calculation of interrater agreement and mean shear modulus). The level of reliability was assessed as the degree of coincidence of points, which are set for each of the indicators of the scale by two observers, independently filling out the expert sheet on the scale. For the total scale score and scores by item, reliability is the matching scores with discrepancy of not more than 1 point up or down. Validity means that the scale allows distinguishing between learning environments with different levels of conditions for the development of children’s creative abilities. Contrasting groups - groups with high and low quality conditions for the development of creative abilities - were pre-determined by experts. In the pilot field study we tested the ability of the scale to distinguish between groups with high and low environmental quality to support creativity. The cluster with previously confirmed good quality level consisted of 10 groups; the cluster with previously confirmed low quality level consisted of 17 groups. The validity control study was carried out by contrasting group method (Welch’s t-test and Mann-Whitney U-test (Wilcoxon rank sum test)). 10 experts took part in the field study, all of them received special preliminary training.

The obtained results demonstrated an acceptable level of interrater agreement: the total score discrepancies of not more than 1 point (including exact matches), were registered in 92% of paired observations. The interrater agreement with not more than 1-point discrepancy was at least, 85% (for “Understanding of development processes” item). In accordance with ECERS-3 validation standards (Harms et al., 2015), it is a high value. For other items, the share of interrater agreement (with no more than 1 point discrepancy) was even more significant: 92% (“Questioning” and “Inventiveness and transformation of opposites”) and 100% (“Imagination”). Correlation analysis showed a significant correlations between by the total score of ECERS-3 and overall score on the CASRS and such items as “Understanding the development processes”, “Questioning” and “Inventiveness and transformation of opposites”. In terms of the total score, clusters with high and low quality had significant differences at the level of α = 0.01 (p-value=1.02E-04 for Welch t-test; p-value=7.22E-05 for Wilcoxon rank sum test). In terms of separate items, significant differences between all groups of clusters with the previously confirmed high and low quality levels, at the level of α = 0.01 were confirmed for all of them. Based on the statistical and qualitative analysis of the obtained results, it can be suggested that CASRS scale validation in real-life conditions was successful. It revealed a sufficient level of validity and reliability of the tool. Quality feedback from the assessors that participated in the study allowed the conclusion that the scale can be useful not only for external assessment or self-assessment of the educational environment, but also in the everyday practice of educators as a tool for professional development aimed at the reflexion on their own strategy the creation of conditions for the development of preschoolers’s creative abilities and discovering their own growing-points.

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