ABSTRACT
Before using the SSTEW Scale for professional development or practice improvement the people are strongly advised to attend a SSTEW Scale training session. The judgements recognise the fact that some staff may be better at supporting children’s learning and development than others but also consider the centre as a whole and all children’s experiences within it. Like many other similar scales, the centre could potentially achieve high scores even though all staff are not all able to support the children in the same way. The joint observation sheet is designed to support discussion between different assessors and to illustrate a final agreed score. The agreed score may be an average of the observers’ scores, but more typically one observer has seen some practice that is important and has been missed by the other observer(s). All observers give evidence to support their scores and after discussion a final score is agreed.
