The Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Well-being (SSTEW) Scale

First published in 2015, The SSTEW Scale has been widely used in early childhood education and care, in all sectors across the world, to enhance the quality of education, and monitor and assess practice. It explores pedagogy and practice that improve children’s social-emotional development, self-regulation, language, and critical thinking. The SSTEW Scale is an innovative method of assessing the process quality of an early years education environment and pedagogy. It promotes practice where staff provide sensitive, responsive relationships and high-quality interactions, which includes supporting children’s social, emotional and communication skills. This scale also helps educators to engage children in thinking deeply, problem solving and reasoning, including items which support the four competencies: critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration, all identified as life-long skills needed for all children in the 21st century by the World Economic Forum in 2016. This new edition includes updated information about the evidence-base for SSTEW and children’s development and learning as well as the expansion of examples and supplementary information accompanying the indicators. In addition, there is a stronger focus on formative assessment and new additions to the assessment section. The SSTEW Scale can be used to support research, auditing and practice uplift. It is a key text for the sector to assess and improve the quality of provision during audits, and for educators seeking professional development by improving their knowledge of excellent practice.