Tier 1 Instructional Strategies To Improve K-4 Reading Comprehension
Category: Student Learning
Instrument Overview
Expert Notes AvailableView expert commentary on strengths and cautions for this instrument
Strengths
Captures the quality of young children’s hands-on exploration (e.g., passive contact vs. active manipulation vs. exploratory variation), providing more nuanced insight into learning-related behavior than simple time-based measures.
Cautions
Relies on observational coding of children’s behavior, which requires trained observers and may introduce subjectivity or variability in scoring across different raters or settings.
The Exploratory Behavior Scale (EBS) is an observational assessment tool designed to measure young children’s hands-on exploratory behavior in interactive learning environments. The instrument is designed to capture the quality of children’s interaction with materials and to enable comparisons across different exhibits or settings using a standardized behavioral framework. The instrument focuses on how preschool-aged children engage with physical materials, particularly in settings such as science museums.
Observations are conducted over defined time intervals, with the highest level of behavior within each interval recorded. As outlined in Table 1, examples of behaviors at each level include watching others (passive), manipulating objects attentively (active), and experimenting through repeated variation (exploratory).
Organization
Topic
Collection Category(ies)
Content
Grades
Pre-Kindergarten
Languages
English
Respondent
Student
Administration Information
Length
3 levels
Access and Use
Price
No fee
Psychometrics (additional guidance)
Item Type
Task
