Why assess? Examining
the purposes of
assessment in education
© McLachlan, Edwards, Margrain & McLean 2013
The purpose of assessment
• Assessment can be defined as the gathering of
information in order to make informed instructional
decisions (Snow & van Hemel, 2008, p. 27). Snow
and van Hemel (2008, p. 18) state that:
Assessment of young children is crucial in meeting a variety of purposes. It
provides information with which caregivers and teachers can better understand
individual children’s developmental progress and status and how well they are
learning, and it can inform caregiving, instruction and needed services. It helps
early childhood program staff determine how well they are meeting their objectives
for the children they serve and it informs program design and implementation. It
provides some of the information needed for program accountability and
contributes to advancing knowledge of child development.
Criteria for assessment
• Snow and Van Hemel (2008, p. 3) propose assessment of
young children should be:
• evidentially based
• proven to be psychometrically sound
• be appropriate to different ages and ethnic groups of children
• cover a range of domains of children’s learning.
• Bagnato (2007) further states that assessment is critical for
families in understanding their children’s progress and that
assessment is crucial for programme planning, monitoring
and programme evaluation
Definitions of issues related to
assessment
• Purpose: Should be explicit, involve a manageable strategy and the options
should be carefully weighed.
• Domains and measures: Should go beyond traditional areas to include
social and emotional functioning and creative expression, be inclusive of
children with special needs and cultural differences and use reliable and valid
instruments.
• Implementation: These factors concern the quality assurance systems
associated with selecting, using and interpreting assessment data.
• Systems: This domain concerns the infrastructure for assessment. Any
system needs to have a well-developed plan for alignment of programme
quality and standards, multiple approaches to assessment, maintenance of a
database for results that is accessible to potential users, and include
professional development, further opportunities to learn, be inclusive, have
sufficient financial resources and include a system for on-going evaluation.
Making decisions about children:
the reason for assessment
• Assessments in educational settings are conducted to gather information
which can be used to make appropriate decisions about children that will
promote their educational and psychological development.
• Should be systematic, multidisciplinary and based on things that children do
on a regular basis.
• Scope of assessments needs to be comprehensive and include information
across the developmental areas of motor skills, temperament, language,
cognition and social-emotional development.
• There are a variety of purposes of assessment which include eligibility for
special programmes for disabled children, placement in educationally
competitive environments, screening, and evaluation of community
programmes.
Screening vs diagnosis
• Screening typically involves the evaluation of large groups of children with brief,
low cost procedures to identify those children who may need further, diagnostic
assessment to qualify for special programmes or early intervention services.
Perhaps a good example in the New Zealand context is the B4 school check, which
a Plunket (child health) Nurse administers and cross checks with a ‘strengths and
difficulties’ screen with the child’s parents and early childhood teachers. (See
http://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/life-stages/child-health/b4-school-check/b4school-check-information-ece-services-and-teachers).
• Diagnostic assessment is typically used when teachers have identified a child has
a potential problem, identified either on a screen or through observation of the
child. Usually involves multiple methods of assessment, both formal and
informal, obtained from multiple sources. Typically, diagnostic assessment is
conducted by special education services or agencies and involves the use of normbased standardised instruments across multiple behavioural domains.
Components of assessment
• Gallavan (2009, p. 11) suggests there are six crucial
components to assessment:
• Each learner’s individuality and background;
• Each learner’s prior knowledge and experiences as part of
the group of learners with constructed knowledge and
shared experiences;
•
•
•
•
The teacher’s expertise and expectations;
The teachers’ organisation and readiness;
The curricular content and academic standards; and
The learning community context.
Dynamic assessment
• Brassard and Boehm (2007, p. 2) state that assessment of young children
needs to be dynamic and on-going with the following features:
• It is multi-faceted (i.e. it uses a variety of measures and approaches)
• Focuses not only on the individual child, but also on his or her learning
•
•
•
•
•
environments of home, school and community
Is used to discover children’s learning strengths, emerging areas of
development, problem solving strategies and personal styles, as well as their
weaknesses and needs
Informs the development of appropriate instructional and behavioural
strategies and interventions
Is tied to teaching goals, which in turn need to be evaluated over time
Is carried out with the expectation that children will change, and that the
earlier an intervention occurs, the greater its prospects for producing
beneficial outcomes
Respects the diversity of children’s backgrounds and experiences
Principles for assessment
• Must have a purpose
• Observation of children participating in play helps to build up
•
•
•
•
•
•
an accurate picture of what children know, understand, feel,
are interested in and can do
Observation can be planned or spontaneous but important
moments should also be captured
Judgment of children’s learning should be based on skills,
knowledge, understanding and behaviour that they
demonstrate consistently and independently
Takes into account all aspects of a child’s learning
Takes into account contributions from a range of perspectives
Parents and primary care givers should be actively involved
Children should be fully involved in their own assessment
Criteria for evaluating assessment
• Validity – Does the assessment measure what it is supposed to measure? Is the
•
•
•
assessment appropriate for the age of the child, their cultural and linguistic
background and the learning context?
Reliability – Can the assessment be relied upon to give accurate information?
Does it give a consistent result over time and with a similar sample?
Manageability – Does the assessment need to be one to one, or can groups do it at
the same time? Is a quiet space needed? Does the teacher need classroom release
time?
Trustworthiness – Is the assessment trustworthy according to the following
categories
• Credibility – is it based on prolonged assessment in the centre, dialogues or
•
•
observation?
Transferability – is the context of assessment specified? Can others also judge the
likelihood of the skill transferring across contexts?
Dependability – are the processes and the judgments made open to scrutiny? Have other
teachers and families also come to the same conclusions?
• Authenticity – To what extent have the perspectives of people involved with the
child been adequately addressed? Have children and their families had the
opportunity to be involved in the assessment?
Formative vs Summative
assessment
• Formative assessment is an ongoing process children and
teachers engage in when they focus on learning goals,
consider where children’s learning is in relation to learning
goals, and take action to move children’s learning closer to
the established goals.
• Summative assessment is less commonly used with very
young children, because it focuses on what children have
learned at the end of an instructional unit. In early childhood
summative assessment is conducted when teachers reflect on
their observations and other assessments with children and
analyse retrospectively what learning has occurred.
Assessment for learning vs of
learning
Best practice: critical qualities in
assessment (Bagnato, 2007)
• Utility – assessment must accomplish the multiple and interrelated purposes
•
•
•
•
of early childhood education and early intervention.
Acceptability – must be mutually agreed on by families and professionals
and should be considered worthwhile and acceptable. This is part of a wider
construct of social validity.
Authenticity – measures used must show what the child can do in natural
settings. Observation is the preferred method, but Bagnato suggests that
rating scales, direct observation, curriculum based checklists and caregiver
interview inventories can also be useful for teachers and professionals to
appraise children’s strengths.
Collaboration – methods used should promote teamwork between families
and professionals, because parents are central partners in children’s learning.
Convergence – data collection by several people is needed to gather
functional, reliable, valid information on the status and progress of children.
Pooling of perspectives provides a better information base.
Best practice: critical qualities in
assessment (Bagnato, 2007)
• Equity – assessment must accommodate individual differences and materials
•
•
must be chosen with recognition of children’s individual abilities and
difficulties (such as low vision). Measures developed for typically
developing children are not suitable for all children.
Sensitivity – assessments should be used to gather evidence of progressively
more complex skill development, so that even small changes can be detected
and celebrated, especially for children with severe delays or impairments.
Many conventional assessment tools are not used often enough or include
enough items to enable a sensitive measurement of progress.
Congruence – materials need to be field validated with infants, toddlers and
young children, including those of typical development and those with mild
to severe disabilities. Assessments developed must be able to detect the
emerging abilities of children at play in various home and early childhood
settings.
Assessment of the whole child
• Needs to consider children’s growth and development across
different domains
• Development in the early childhood period across different
domains may be discontinuous and unstable, display diverse
rates of maturation, and there are often spurts in development
• Because children’s learning and development is so rapid,
assessment needs to be frequent, on-going and encompass a
‘feedback loop’ that takes into account development,
instruction and intervention
• Should use naturalistic vs ‘strange situations’
‘What next?’ in assessment
• Three commonly understood components of assessment:
• Collecting information about learning;
• Recording assessment findings so judgements can be made about
what has been learned and what needs to happen next; and
• Reporting judgements to others.
• Fleer (2010) calls this ‘potentive assessment’, arguing that
teachers are always looking for the potential in children’s
learning
• It is particularly important to be thinking of ‘what next?’ for
exceptional learners
Involving children in assessment
• Puckett and Black (2008) argue that when children are involved
in assessment it supports both children’s perceptions of
themselves as learners, but also their perception of their teacher
as a collaborator in their learning and development. As they state:
Collaboration in assessment and planning can shift the emphasis in
instructional practices from the teacher as authority and primary source of
ideas and information to the student as idea-generator, choice-maker, coplanner, initiator and contributor to the learning process (2008, p. 9)
• Such collaboration can be conceptualised as an apprenticeship, in
which children learn alongside the teacher, become a member of
a learning community, have their ideas supported and integrated
into curriculum, have their emotional, social and cultural
differences recognised and validated and receive support as
needed
Key terms
•
•
•
•
•
Formative assessment – focuses on what
and how children are learning and moving
them onto the next level of thinking and
learning.
Screening – involves the evaluation of
large groups of children with brief, low
cost procedures to identify those children
who may need further, diagnostic
assessment to qualify for special
programmes or early intervention services
Validity – does the assessment measure
what it is supposed to measure?
Manageability – does the assessment need
to be one to one, or can groups do it at the
same time?
Authenticity – to what extent have relevant
stakeholders’ constructs been fairly and
adequately covered?
•
•
•
•
Summative assessment – focuses on what
children have learned at the end of an
instructional unit.
Diagnostic assessment – is used when a
child has been identified with a potential
problem. Typically, diagnostic assessment is
conducted by special education services or
agencies and involves the use of multiple
norm-based standardised instruments across
multiple behavioural domains
Reliability – can the assessment be relied
upon to give accurate information?
Trustworthiness – can the assessment be
trusted? Is there credible, transferable and
dependable evidence to support teacher
judgements?