Emotional Sensibility Observation Scale: Measuring Quality Relationships and Early Childhood Educators’ Emotional Perceptibility in Responding to Children’s Cues

Abstract

An educator’s ability and willingness to be perceptive and responsive to the cues of children in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings can affect the quality of the relationships built. Although several instruments that aim to measure quality relationships currently exist, these instruments are often not exclusive to the educator–child dynamic, fail to be context-sensitive, and do not mitigate scope for observer subjectivity. The Emotional Sensibility Observation Scale (ESOS) was developed in collaboration with ECEC stakeholders (teachers, educators, centre directors, and researchers) in Australia to address the aforementioned gaps while acknowledging the unique relationships between educators and children in ECEC settings. It is proposed in the paper that the ESOS may serve as a useful tool for researchers and educators to assess Early Childhood (EC) educators’ ability to accurately read and respond to children’s cues and to measure the quality of relationships built over time.