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be performed” to ensure a procedure or practice is imple-
24000
22000 mented correctly (Wilson, 2013, p. 4).
The second is a description of the challenges, prob-
20000
18000 lems, and concerns that surfaced in using the 2014 DEC
NUMBER OF CITATIONS 14000 checklists, and how they were overcome for developing
16000
recommended practices for developing performance
12000
early childhood intervention performance checklists and
10000
practice guides. A number of shortcomings of the DEC
8000
6000
efforts were made to use the recommended practices to
4000 recommended practices became increasingly apparent as
inform checklist development, especially the selection or
2000
development of performance checklist indicators.
0
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 The third is to describe what was done to develop
FIVE-YEAR BLOCKS
Figure 1-1. Knowledge growth curve for the number evidence-informed performance checklists and practice
of Google Scholar search results for early intervention guides, and what product development process, research
and early childhood intervention citations for twelve evidence, and product design sources were used to de-
5-year blocks between 1960 and 2019. (NOTE. The velop both sets of materials. The goal was the develop-
2015 to 2019 block was estimated based on the 2010 ment of internally consistent sets of checklists and prac-
to 2017 trends in citations.) Reprinted pursuant to a tice guides that could be used by practitioners to provide
Creative Commons Attribution license. or mediate others’ use of evidence-based early childhood
intervention practices.
Meige & Schmitt, 2015) and knowledge growth in spe- The chapter is divided into four sections. The first
cific fields of inquiry and science (e.g., Densen, 2011; section includes a brief overview of the 2014 DEC rec-
Fernandez-Moure, 2016; Milicevic, 2015). Keeping pace ommended practices. The second section includes a
with knowledge explosion in any field, including early description of the intended use of the practices for de-
childhood intervention, can be especially challenging, veloping performance checklists and practice guides for
if not impossible, in the absence of explicit knowledge informing improvements in early childhood intervention.
management. The third section includes descriptions of the problems,
Amid knowledge explosion, both knowledge man- concerns, and challenges in using the recommended prac-
agement and knowledge sharing become especially im- tices for developing performance checklists and why, in
portant for helping knowledge users navigate ever ex- certain instances, they could not be easily translated into
panding amounts of information (Asrar-ul-Haq & Anwar, usable checklist indicators or even used as the founda-
2016; Huysman & de Wit, 2002; Janus, 2016). Rehman tions for developing checklist indicators. The chapter
(2016) proposed a model of knowledge management and concludes with a description of how the limitations of
knowledge sharing that emphasizes harvesting and cat- the 2014 DEC recommended practices were overcome
egorizing information specifically in terms of end-users, and addressed as part of developing evidence-informed
and how the ways in which packaging and disseminat- performance checklists (Dunst, 2017a).
ing information facilitates learners’ understanding and
use of information (see e.g., Cook, Cook, & Landrum, 2. DEC Recommended Practices
2013; Wandersman et al., 2008). Among the many ap-
proaches and learning tools for accomplishing this goal, he 2014 set of recommended practices constitutes a
Janus (2016) noted the special importance of operational Tthird generation set of DEC practices to inform ear-
(performance) checklists for accomplishing knowledge ly intervention and early childhood special education
sharing. (McLean, 2015). The first two sets of DEC recommended
There are three main purposes of this introductory practices each included hundreds of early childhood in-
chapter. The first is a description of the process that was tervention practices (DEC Task Force on Recommended
proposed for using the revised Council for Exceptional Practices, 1993; Sandall, McLean, & Smith, 2000). The
Children, Division for Early Childhood (DEC) Recom- 2000 version of the DEC recommended practices, for
mended Practices (2014) in early intervention/early example, included 240 practices (Snyder & Ayankoya,
childhood special education to develop performance 2015), too many for any practitioner to be able to re-
checklists for improving early childhood intervention member, let alone master and use in a proficient manner.
practices. Performance checklists include “lists of tasks One goal in developing the 2014 set of recommended
or steps required to complete a procedure successfully… practices was “to create a smaller set of recommended
and serve as concrete reminders of which tasks need to practices…in order to identify a core set of revised prac-

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