Construction and validation of an observational instrument to assess infant executive functions through playing

The development of executive functions in childhood constitutes a key aspect for the subsequent development and learning of children. Early assessment of these functions can be crucial for detecting difficulties and implementing optimizing educational strategies. However, the assessment of children’s executive functions still poses a challenge for teachers. To overcome this challenge, play is the primary tool for learning and assessment in early childhood education. The importance of play in early childhood education as a learning driver is present and validated from educational legislation to international scientific literature. Therefore, considering the strengths of play and systematic observation, the latter being the most appropriate methodology for evaluating child behaviour, the aim of this work was to construct an observation instrument to assess children’s executive functions through play. The construction of the observation instrument was carried out following the steps established by observational methodology. Through an iterative process, preliminary sessions, contributions from the literature, and meetings among researchers were conducted to carry out the construction process. For its validation through Generalizability Theory, observation sessions were conducted with a sample of 17 children aged 4-5 years in early childhood education. This observation instrument, called IEEFECH (Instrument for Evaluation of Executive Functions in Early Childhood Education), was validated through the use of Generalizability Theory. The results supported the validity and reliability of the instrument. Therefore, IEEFECH constitutes an assessment tool for children’s executive functions based on play that will allow teachers and other specialists to obtain objective, valid, and reliable information from which to design and implement educational strategies that respond to the needs of each child. In addition, this observation instrument will be useful using play as the central axis of evaluation, given its relevance as a method of learning, exploration, and assessment in early childhood education.