I'm Back!!! Children's Social Behavior: Assessment Considerations and Criteria. (Head Start Profiles of

This document presents the results of observations, interviews, and a review of the literature on assessment of children's social behavior. Categories of types of social behavior which can be observed easily and which seem to hold importance for most child care staff were selected. These categories are conversation, acquisition, social information, monitoring the environment, participation in activities, imitation of others, creative behaviors, expression of feelings, behaviors expressing self-concept, behaviors indicating security, changes in the child's own norm of social behavior, the teacher's feeling of how the child responds to him or her, peer teaching behaviors, ability to change the rules of a group, and adaptive behaviors. It is stressed that observations and assessments should be theory-guided. It is assumed that behavioral and pedagogical theory is always operative i