Research in Early Childhood Education

Nurrul Huwaina.Yogeswary.Fatin Amira

Understanding assessment and evaluation in early childhood

education
Dominic F. Gullo
Sue C. Wortham
Assessment
 What is Assessment
•Assessment is a Process
For example :
Assessment start to begins before birth with assessment
fetal growth and development
Before enter in school children need to go medical
examination and also children will also measured through
observation of developmental milestones.
•Assessment is the process of gathering information about
children from several forms of the evidence then organizing
and interpreting that information ( McAfee,Leong &
Bodrova,2004)
• Assessment methods must be matched with the level of
mental, social, and physical developmental each stage.
• Development change in young children is rapid , but need to
assess whether development is progressing normally.
• If the development in abnormal , the measurement and
evaluation procedures used are important in making
decisions regarding appropriate intervention services during
infancy and the preschool years.
 Purpose of Assessment
•Purpose 1 : Assessing to promote children’s learning and
development:

(age birth to 3) Parents and caregivers observe and respond as

children develop language and physical skills.
(age 3 to 5) Parents, caregivers, and preschool teachers use
direct measures, including observations of what children are
learning, to decide what to teach next.
(age 5 to 7) Teachers use both formal and informal
assessments to plan and guide instruction
•Purpose 2 : Identifying children for health and social services :

(age birth to 3) All children should be screened regularly for health needs,
including hearing and vision checks, as part of routine health care services.
Many serious cognitive and physical disabilities are evident at birth or soon
thereafter. As soon as developmental delays or potential disabilities are
suspected, parents and physicians should seek indepth assessments.
(age 3 to 5) Children entering Head Start and other preschool programs
should be screened for health needs, including hearing and vision checks.
Individual children with possible develop mental delays should be referred for
indepth assessment.
(age 5 to 7) All children should be screened at school entry for vision and
hearing needs and checked for immunizations. Some mild disabilities may
only become apparent in the school context. Districts and states must by law
have sound teacher and parent referral policies, so that children with potential
disabilities are referred for indepth assessment.
•Purpose 3 : Monitoring treads and evaluating programs and services :

(age birth to 3) Because direct measures of children's language and cognitive

functioning are difficult to aggregate accurately for ages from birth to 2, state
reporting systems should focus on living and social conditions that affect learning
and the adequacy of services.
(age 3 to 5) Assessments, including direct and indirect measures of children's
physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development, could be constructed and
used to evaluate prekindergarten programs, but such measures would not be
accurate enough to make high-stakes decisions about individual children.
(age 5 to 7) Beginning at age 5, it is possible to use direct measures, including
measures of children's early learning, as part of a comprehensive early childhood
assessment for monitoring trends. Matrix sampling should be used to ensure
technical accuracy and to provide safeguards for individual children. Because of
the cost of such an assessment, states or the nation should pick one grade level
for monitoring trends in early childhood, most likely kindergarten or first grade.
•Purpose 4: Assessing academic achievement to hold
individual students, teachers, and schools accountable (
Shepard,Kagan, Lynn & Wurtz, 1998).

(beyond age eight) Before age eight, standardized

achievement measures are not sufficiently accurate to be used
for high-stakes decisions about individual children and
schools. Therefore, high-stakes assessments intended for
accountability purposes should be delayed until the end of
third grade (or preferably fourth grade)
 Components of an Assessment System

•Standardized Test –
designed to measure individual characteristics.
Purpose – standardized test is to measure abilities ,
achievement, aptitudes, interests, attitudes, values and
personality characteristics.
Example of Standardize Test
 Classroom / Informal assessment Strategies
•Informal screening test may be administered to
preschool children at registration to determine their
instructional need’s.
•For example :
The speech teacher may use a simple screening
instrument to evaluate the child’s language
development or possible speech difficulties.
 Observation
• Valuable ways to became aware of the individual characteristics of young children is
throught observation.
• Adult who observe children as they play and work in individual or group activities are
able to determine progress in all categories of development shows evidence of
emerging prosocial skills by playing successfully in the play-ground is demonstrating
signnificant growth in social development.
• For example : Physical Development
• Can be evaluated by observing children using playing using playground equipment .
Why ?
- Young children learn best through active involvement with their environment ,
evaluation of learning may be assessed most appropriately by observing the child
during periods of activity.
 Observation records can be used to plan instruction, to report progress in various
areas of development and to track progress in mastery of preschool curriculum
objective.
 Anecdotal Record
•An anecdotal record (or anecdote) is like a short story that educators use to record a significant incident that they have observed.
•Anecdotal records are usually relatively short and may contain written descriptions of behaviors and direct quotes.
-Direct observation
-Prompt, accurate and specific account of an event
-Context of the behaviour
-Interpretation of the incident are recorded separately from the incident
-Focuses on behaviour that is either typical or unusual for the child being observed.

How to write anecdote?

•Anecdotal records are written after the fact, so use the past tense when writing them
•Being positive and objective, and using descriptive language are also important things to keep in mind when writing your anecdotal
records.
•Anecdotal records are like short stories; so be sure to have a beginning, a middle and an end for each anecdote.
For example: daily logbook or index card – recorded new skills to share with parents “ eating habit

Advantage Disadvantage
-Quick and easy to use - might not contain enough information
-Takes a moment analyse the content observation
- be creative on how to develop a system
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 Running Record
•A narrative written in sequence even in sequence over a specified time
•Recorded while behavior is occurring
•Running records recorded all behavior and not just selected incidents
•Written as the behavior occurs instead of later

How to use running record?

•The observer sits or stand apart from the children and writes down everything that occurs to a particular child over a specific period,
which may be recorded from time to time during a full day.
*Future readers can visualize
*More detailed narrative

How to write running record?

•Sentences are often short, and words are abbreviated to keep up with the pace of the action.
•As with all factual recording, the observer must be careful not to use descriptive words and phrases that are judgmental

Advantages Disadvantage
-Different purpose as demonstrated - type of observation must be
-More information scheduled
- Provide “ snap or video “ - time designated
- Better understanding - difficult to manage
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 Time Sampling
•A time sampling observation is a data collection method that records the number of times a specific behavior was noticed
within a set period of time. It has many applications and is a common research method within the fields of education and
psychology.
•Time sampling involves observing a specified behavior of an individual or a group and recording the preference or absence
during short time intervals of uniform length.

How to use time sampling ?

•In time sampling, the observer records the frequency of a behavior's occurrence over time. The behavior must be overt and
frequent (at least once every 15 minutes) to be a candidates for sampling.
•For example: hitting and crying are behaviors that a teacher might want to sample for certain children because they can be
seen and counted.
•Tallies and symbols showing the presence of absence of specified behavior during short time periods.
•Recorded while behavior is occurring
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 Teacher- Designed Measures
• Teachers always used test that they have devised to measure the level of learning
after instruction.
• Early childhood teachers are more likely to use concrete tasks or oral questions for
informal assessment with young children.
• Activities or games can be used both to teach and to evaluate what the child has
learned.
• Evaluation can also be conducted through learning centers or as part of teacher-
directed lesson.
• For example :
• Pencil-and –paper tests are also a teachers-designed measure, they should not be
used until children are comfortable with reading and writing
Sample Uppercase and Lowercase letter
 Checklist
•Developmental checklists or other forms of learning objective sequence are used at
all levels of preschool, elementary and secondary schools.
•often refer as : Scope or Sequence of skills
•Checklist is established for areas of learning and development at a particular age,
grade level or content areas.
•Many Checklist are standardized but locally developed by a teacher or school
district and are not standardized.
•A teacher may construct one, or a school district may distribute checklist for each
grade level.
•For example :
Educational textbook publishers frequently include a skills continuum for teachers to
use as an instruction guide with the textbook they have selected.
Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Profile (CSBS DP) Infant-Toddler
Checklist and Easy-Score User's Guide:

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 Rating Scales
•Rating scales are similar to checklists.
•Contain criteria for measurement that can be based on learning learning objectives or others factors.
•Rating scale scales can be used for many purposes when a range of criteria is needed to acquire
accurate information.
•DIFFERENCE
Rating scale – provide for measurement on a continuum.
Checklist items – rated with a negative or positive response .
Example of Rating Scale
The method of rating scale
•A scale of traits or behaviours with checkmarks, recorded
before, during, and after behaviours occurs
 Rubrics
• Developed to evaluate authentic and perfomance assessment.
• They include a range of criteria like rating scales, but have indidcators that can be used to determine
quality of performance or to assign a grade.
• Rubrics are used most frequently with portfolio assessment , but are appropriate for performance
assessment that is not part od a portfolio.

Type of Rubrics
- Holistic ( describe the quality of work or performance at each level )
- Analytic ( describes and scores each of the task attributes separately, uses limited descriptors for
each attribute uses a scale that can be both narrow and broad, and allows for specific diagnostic
feedback)
- Development ( designed to serve a multiage group of student or to span several grade level
 Holistic rubric
1. Inexperienced writer
uses scribble writing or letter-like marks. Uses pictures. May dictate a sentence to the teacher.

2. Beginning writer
attempts to write words on paper, but is very limited. May copy words or sentences. Can write familiar words memory.

3. Developing writer
May show understanding of conventions of print. Uses spacing for word boundaries. Attempts to sequence thoughts. Uses
inventive spelling.

4. Mature writer
writing is on topic; confident, developing fluency. May write multiple sentences. There is a beginning, middle and end.
Shows some accuracy in punctualization and capitalization. Still makes errors.
 Analytic
( Analytic Rubric ) Analytic Scale for Problem Solving

Understanding the problem

0 - No attempt
1 - Completely misinterprets the problem
2 - Misinterprets major part of the problem
3 - Misinterprets minor part of the problem
4 - Complete understanding of the problem

Solving the problem

0 - No attempt
1 - Totally inappropriate plan
2 - Partially correct procedure but with major fault
3 - Substantially correct procedure with major omission or procedural error
4 - A plan that could lead to a correct solution with no arithmetic errors

Answering the problem

0 - No answer or wrong answer based upon an inappropriate plan

1 - Copying error, computational error, partial answer for problem with multiple answer;no
2 - Correct solution
 Development
( Developmental Rubric )

Speaking Rubric Assessment Scale ( Grades 1-5 )

Secure Speaker
•Confident speaker
•Speaks loudly, clearly, and with expression
•Expresses ideas with elaboration and support
•Consistently makes relevant contributions to class discussions

Developing Speaker
•Competent speaker
•Speaks loudly and clearly
•Expresses ideas in complete sentences
•Takes part in class discussions and stays on topic

Beginning Speaker
•May be a reluctant speaker
•Needs to work on speaking skills ( Volume, Clarity, Eye contact )
•Rarely contributes to class discussions in a meaningful way
Advantages of Analytic Rubrics

•Provide useful feedback on areas of strength and weakness.

•Criterion can be weighted to reflect the relative importance of each
dimension.

Disadvantages of Analytic Rubrics

•Takes more time to create and use than a holistic rubric.

•Unless each point for each criterion is well-defined raters may not
arrive at the same score
 Performance and Portfolio Assessment
• Informal assessments focus on more meaningful types of evaluation of student
learning. ( performance assessment or authentic assessment ) Goodwin 1993.
• The evaluation measures use strategies that permit the child to demonstrate his or
her understanding of concepts or mastery of a skills.
• The evaluation might take the form of a teacher teacher-directed interview in which a
dialogue with the child would reveal the child’s thinking and understanding.
• For example : games, directed assignment or activities related to a project
• Process for reporting student progress related to outcame-based or authentic
assessment are also intended to communicate learning and development from a
meaningful prespective.
• For example : traditional report cards and standardized test results do not necessarily
reflect the students progress accurately.
 Portfolio – samples of the students work are one type of reporting of progress that is
compatible with outcome-based assessment.
 Narrative report – student’s progress developed by the teacher is another process
that enables the teacher to describe the nature of the child’s activites that have
resulted in achievement and learning.
 Types of Performance- Based Assessment
• Interview
- Interviews find out what children understand about concepts.
- By questioning and asking more questions based on children’s responses, determined not only what the child understood but
also the thinking processes used to organize responses to the question ( Piaget).
- Interview – unstructured
- structure
- diagnostic

 Structure interview – planned by teacher and conducted to acquire specific understandings about the child.
example : the teacher might want to determine the beginning reader’s understanding of a story.
After a reading of the story, the teacher asks probing questions to elicit the child
thoughts about the meaning of the story.

 Unstructured interview – happen when children are playing, working in centers or classroom activities
- unplanned and sudden interview.
 Diagnostic interviews – the interview can be informal or structured.
- the teacher question is directed more at understanding what kind of help the child
needs through responses to questions. If the teacher notices that child is confused or making errors, the
diagnostic interview can reveal the difficulty the child is experiencing in thinking about the concept or
skills.
Contracts
- They provide a plan between the teacher and the child and a record of the child’s progress
- Contracts of activities the child will engage in are designed for a period during a day, for the whole day, or for several days.
- Contracts can also be used to record accomplishment of skills and concepts. The teacher and the child can use the contract as a guide for
conference and interviews or as a recording system for the teacher to indicate when the child has completed an objective or needs more
opportunities to interact with a concept.

Game
- Understand children progress with a skill or a concepts
- For example : more and one child will be playing at one time, the teacher can use observation to assess the child’s abilities and thinking.
- Kamii & Rosenblum ( 1990 ) suggest that the teacher use games for systematic observation of an entire class.
- For example : card games to identify letter knowledge are one ready example.
- Board game can be adapted or developed for language arts, mathematics and social studies.
Project
- Conducted by a student or a group of student that is lengthier than a classroom activity conducted during a single class period.
- For example : a group of student studying about flowers, so they are encourage to gather samples of the flowers, identify them, and
describe their characteristics. Each flower is dried and attached to the completed information.
- The completed booklet of flowers becomes the product of the project that could be evaluated.
- Projects are flexible in term of meeting student need’s.

 Work samples
- Teachers and student are equal participants in the use of work samples for performance assessment.
- Example : all types of children’s work that can demonstrate the child’s developmental progress or accomplishments.
- For preschool children, work samples may be clay models of animals that reflect the child’s understanding of concepts in a thematic study
related animal
- Primary –grade = children might have samples of books reports, creative writing that has been illustrated, work pages of computation
problems.
Evaluation
• Evaluation is the process of making judgments about the merit, value, or worth
of educational programs, projects, materials, or techniques.
• Assessments may be used during the process of educational evaluation in
order to make these judgements.
• (Smith & Glass, 1987) Evaluation often includes researchlike techniques, for
the judgements and conclusion. Can either be comparative or noncomparative.
• Comparative evaluation - alternative programs outcomes are assessed and
compare.
• Example : kindergarten programs using half-day, full-day, alternative full-day
schedule were compared to determine their relative effects on children's
academic achievement and classroom behaviour.
• Noncomparative evaluation - program outcomes are assessed in one group
only, and these results are compared with an absolute criterion.
• Example : Head start programs are evaluated using the program review
instrument for system monitoring (PRISM)
: The National Association for the Education of Young Children
(NAEYC) has established the National Academy of Early Childhood
Porgrams. Used for accrediting early childhood programs. Using this
evaluation, different components of an early childhood program are
compared with standard developed by NAEYC.
 NAEYC suggested that a number of guidelines should be consider when
making deisions regarding individual child evaluation. These include
answering the following questions :

1. What is the purpose of evaluation in early childhood programs ?

2. What is accountability ?
3. What standards of quality should be used in evaluation programs taht serve
young children ?
4. Is it necessary for all programs serving young children to be evaluated ?
5. What components should a program evaluation include ?
6. Who should conduct program evaluations ?
7. What kinds of support are needed in order to conduct a good evaluation ?
8. How should data gathered in a program evaluation be analyzed ?
9. How should information form a program evaluation be used ?
 In early childhood education we evaluate :
i. Curriculum
ii. Materials & equipment
iii. The environment
iv. Children's behavior
v. Teacher effectiveness

 Why do we evaluate ?
i. Evaluations monitor growth, progress, and palnning
ii. Evaluations provide information by which to rate performance, define
areas of difficulty, and look for possible solutions
iii. It helps in goal setting
Evaluation process :
i. Select who or what will be
evaluated
ii. Have a clear purpose or
motive
iii. Decide how data will be
colleted
iv. Know what you will use the
information for
v. State goals clearly
Concerns of evaluations :
i. Unfair comparisons
ii. Bias
iii. Overemphasis on norms
iv. Interpretation
v. Too narrow a perspective
vi. Too wide of a range of
information
vii.Too little or too much time
 General principles for guiding assessment and evaluation practices in early
childhood
• Principle 1 : Benefit Children
This can be either in the form of improvements to the quality of the
programs in which children participate or in an increases in the amount of
direct services that are provided for children.

• Principle 2 : Be used for a Specific Purpose

"Assessments should be tailored to a specific purpose and should be
reliable, valid, and fair for that purpose". The decisions based on much of
the high-stakes testing today reflect the misuse of tests.

• Principle 3 : Recognize the Limitations of Young Age

"Assesments policies should be designed reognizing that realiablity and
validity of assessments increase with children's age". The primary tenet of
this principle is that the younger the child, the more difficult it is to obtain
reliable and valid results from assessment procedures. it is cautioned that
many types of assessment should not be administered until the child is
older.
• Principle 4 : Be Age-Appropriate
"Assessment should be age-appropriate in both content and the method of data
collection". Assessment should address all areas of learning and development
including cognitive, languages, physical and well-being, social and emotional,
and motor development.

• Principle 5 : Be Linguistically Appropriate

"Assessments should be linguuistically appropriate, recognizing that to some
extent all assessments are measures of language". Young children in this country
come from very diverse backgrounds - culturallym linguistically, ethnically,
racially, and socioeconomically. These differences among children, who are often
in the same classroom, can and will affet the assessment process as well as the
validity of the assessment.

• Priciple 6 : Value Parents

"Parents should be a valued source of assessment information, as well as an
audience for assessment results". Assessment and evaluation procedures should
be such that they provide valuable information to parents concerning their child's
development, learning, achievement in school, as well as the progress that is
being made by their child.
 Purpose for assessment and evaluation in early childhood education
• Purpose 1 : Assessment to Support Learning
"Assessing to promote children's learning and development". Two aspect are
considered within assessment and evaluation framework are the usefulness of
determining what type of academic skills and factual knowledge the child has.
According to Meisels (1987) readiness tests might be one usefull tool in determining
the child's current level of academic functioning, and he maintains that readiness
tests can be used to assits teachers in planning the curriculum. In addition,
information from readiness tests can help teachers determine how prepared children
are to engage in particular curricular activities and therefore whether they can
benefit from them.
Observing children engaged in activities is very useful in determining their level of
functioning within academic settings. Talking with them and asking questions in
another.
Cryan (1986) lists a number of informal techniques of assessing academic readiness
in children, including direct observation, interviews, checklist, samples of children's
work, and anedotal records. Used systematically, such methods will provide the
teacher with much useful information.
• Purpose 2 : Identification of Special Needs
"Indentifying children for health and special services". Assessment should
also be used to identify children's special problems for the purpose of
determining if there is a need for adtional services beyond that which is
already provided.
Special needs are described as blindness, speech and language
disabilities, cognitive delays, emotional disturbance, learning disabilities,
and motor impairment.
Step for assessment and evaluation is screening. Screening is only used
during the initial stages of speial needs identification and referral. Often,
classroom teachers or others who have no special training in the
administration of standardized diagnostic assessments administer
screening assessments.
After screening, a diagnostic procedure is implemented. The child is
referred to the appropriate specialits or specialists who assess the child in
depth using diagnostic assessments.
Specialists include such individuals as the psychologist, speech
pathologist, medical doctor, a counseling psychologist, and the like.
• Purpose 3 : Child Progress and Program Evaluation
"Monitoring trends and evaluating programs and services". Individual child
assessments are combined across groups of children to determine
program effectiveness and examined individually over time to examine
children's progress.
According to McAfee and Leong (2002), there are three reasons for
teachers to track children's progress. First, teachers need to know that
what they are doing with children in the classroom results in learning and
development. Second, teachers need to show both families and children
that progress is being made. And third, by providing evidence of progress
to children and families, and increase in motivation on the part of both
parents and children may be realized.
Teachers should use ongoing assessment in order "to understand specific
children and to gain information on which to base immediate decisions on
how to direct, guide, teach, or respond (Phinney,1982)
By combining assessment information from the children in the classroom,
teachers can also evaluate the effectiveness of their program it is in
porgress. Evaluation with this purpose is often referred to as formative
evaluation.
Formative evaluation refers to assessments of quality that are focused
on curricular programs that may still be modified. Formative evaluation
is undertaken to assess the program's improvement (
Royce,Murray,Lazar & Darlington, 1982). The major purpose of
formative evaluation is to detrmine whether or not the curricular goals
and objectives are being met.
Special instruments have been designed to evaluate different
components of the early education program. For example, the revised
edition of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-R)
can be used by classroom teachers to assess children's personal care
rountines, furnishing and display for children, language-reasoning
experiences, fine and gross motor activities, creative activities, social
development activities, and adult needs.
Each of the factors in the environment are rated on a scale from 1
(inadequate) to 7 (excellent). At rating points 1,3,5, and 7, a description
of the characteristic for the factor at the rating point is given.
Louise Derman-Sparks (1989) discusses ways the curriculum can be
evaluate for bias and provides strategies for modifying the curriculum
to eliminate it. She dicussess racial biasa, cultural bias, gender bias,
and stereotyping in general.
Talan and Bloom (2005) provide administrators with a means of
evaluating whether the administrative characteristics of their
programs indicate good early childhood programming. They cover a
number of administrative concerns, including staff orientation,
supervision and performance appraisal, staff development,
compensation, benefits, staffing patterns and scheduling, facilities
management, risk management, and internal communication.
Summative evaluation, information is gathered regarding the worth of an
overall instructional sequence so that decisions can be made regarding
whether to retain or adopt that sequence. This sequence can either be a
specific one (e.g, balanced literacy insruction or basal reading instructional
approach) or one that represents a whole-program approach (e.g, full-day
kindergarten or half-day kindergarten schedule).
Take, for example the question of deciding between a half-day or full- day
kindergarten schedule - a dilemma that many school districts are facing.
Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages to both.
In a summative evaluation, the evaluator would be interested in
determining if the benefits of a full-day kindergarten schedule warrant
either keeping a full-day schedule or changing to it from the more
traditional half-day schedule. At the end of the school year, the summative
evaluation might investigate what effects the full-day kindergarten
schedule (as compared with the half-day kindergarten schedule) has on a
number of variables: end of the year general achievement levels, reading
levels, depth of curriculum coverage, parent satisfication, child attitudes
toward school and learning, teacher satisfication, retention, attendance,
social development, ease of transition into first grade, and so forth.
 Purpose 4 : Accountability
"Assesing academic achievement to hold individual students, teachers,
and school accountable".
Two types of standards are usual in this instance :
Content standards refer to what should be learned within the various
subjet areas. Content standard can also include critical thinking ability,
problem solving skills, reasoning, and strategies that are used by children
in gathering information (McAfee&Leong, 2002)
Performance standards refer to the levels of achievement that are thought
to be appropriate for individual grade levels. They are means of
determining the degree to which content standards have been achieved
(Lewis, 1995; Ravitch, 1995). Most performance standards include
benchmarks for each grade, indicating the level of attainment that children
should have for each of the content standards ( McAfee & Leong, 2002)
 Assessment and evaluation as part of the educative process

 Continuos Process
Must should be procedures that describe the progress of children over
time. One cannot define what progress is, or describe it, if evaluation is
limited to assessing children only at the end of their experiences.
There is no inherent beginning, middle, or end to children's learning.
While it may be important to identify the sequence that children are
learning, what it also significant to reognize, and subsequently
measure, is that children are progressing throughthe sequence, not
necessarily that they are all at the same point in the sequence at some
given moment.
Education evaluation and assessment should be viewed as a
description of where children are at any given moment within some
learning sequence continuum.
 Integrative Process
The instructional goals expressly stated in the curriculum should guide the
process of evaluation. The nature of what is assessed and how assessment
procedures are defined should be directly linked to the experiences children
have within the curriculum.
There are two ways that the outcomes of assessment and evaluation are diretly
linked to instruction. First, assessment and evaluation can be used as tools for
modifying curriculum to meet individual children's needs. Since children benefit
in different ways from different instrcutional strategies, evaluation can be used
to determine which children benefit from which instructional strategies.
Second, evaluation can be used as a tool to measure overall curriculum
effectiveness. Just as curriculum experiences are beneficial to different children
in different ways, there may be some curriculum experiences that are not
effetive for any children.
Thus, evaluation can be a useful instrument in making general curriculum
adjustments, as well as individualized ones.
 Comprehensive Process
While assessing young children and evaluating early education
programs are much more complex processes than describing of the
situation. Althought children will give the different answer on what they
know based on the recall story, each of them was partially corret
because each only partially experienced the situation.
While assesing young children and evaluating early education programs
are much more complex processes than describing an situation, there
are some similarities.
Not only are there many aspets of learning and development that can be
assessed, there are also many contexts within which they can be
assessed. It is important to understand that evaluation should utilize
multiple sources of information, assess multiple aspects of the
individual, and take place in multiple contexts.
 Formal assessment and evaluation instruments

• Formal assessment and evaluation instruments generally refer to

standardized tests, which allow educators to compare an
individual child's performance on the test to the performance of
other children who have similiar characteristics.
• In early childhood education, four types of standardized
assessments are used; Developmental screening tests,
readiness tests, diagnostic test, and achievement tests.
 Developmental Screening Tests
• Generally, developmental screening tests are norm-referenced
assessment instruments that allow one to compare an individual child's
score with those of other children of similar chronological age. Many of the
avaiable developmental screening tests vary somewhat in their focus.
Meisels and Atkins-Burnett (1994) state, however, the most of the test
items on the screening instruments can be grouped into three areas.
• In the first area, items are related to visual-motor and adaptive skills.
These involve such things as control of fine movements, eye-hand
coordination, the ability to recall sequences using visual stimuli, copying
forms from two-dimensional representations of the form, and reproducing
forms from three-dimensional model.
• The second area, involves skills realted to language communication and
thinking. The tasks here include language comprehension and expression,
reasoning, counting and recalling sequences from auditory stimuli.
• The third area includes gross motor skills and body awereness. This
involves such things as balance, coordination of large muscles
movements and body position awereness.
Screening Tests Physical Domain
Screening Tests Physical Domain
Screening Tests language Domain
 Diagnostic Tests
• Used to identify the existence of an disability or sepcific area of academic
weakness in a child. Test results are used to suggest posible causes for the
disability or academic weakness as well as to suggest potential remediation
strategies.
• Usually administered by highly trained individuals such as school and clinical
psychologits, speech pathologists, social workers, guidance counselor, and
teachers. Frequently, a child who is undergoing diagnostic assessment may
be seen by a group of professional known as a multidisciplinary assessment
team.
• Some diagnostic instruments may be specialized and used when a specific
learning problem is indicated. For example, if a child has language that is
unintelligence speech, but has poor conceptual or other general language
difficulties, a different type of language assessment might be called for. If, on
the other hand, the child demonstrates general cognitive delays, and IQ test
or other measure of cognitive abilities may be warranted.
• Some of the instruments are very specialized by developmental domain
while some are general. Some are specialized by specific age range while
others are appropriate for early childhood through adulthood.
Physical Domain
 Readiness Tests
• Used in early childhood education to assess the degree to which children are
prepared for an academic or preacademic program (NAEYC,1988a). They are
similiar in form and content to achievement tests in that they measure
children's mastery over specific curriculum content.
• Used to assess what content childen have mastered in order to determine how
"ready" they are to go on to the next phase of instruction. Most readiness teats
are criterion referenced have items that focus on general knowledge and skill
achievement and performance (Meisel, 1987)
• The purpose of a readiness test is to determine the specific skills and
knowledge children have mastered. The results of readiness tests are used for
both placement and curriculum planning.
• As such, readiness tests are product oriented - measuring the skills and
knwledge the child already possesses - while developmental screening tests
are process oriented - measuring the child's ability to acquire new knowledge
and skills.
• Because readiness tests do not directly measure children's potential for future
learning, they do not adequently predict future academic achievement ( Wiske,
Meisels, & Tivnam, 1981)
 Achievement Tests
• Many early childhood programs use achievement tests to assess
children's progress or level of attainment. An achievement test measures
the extent to which an individual has achieved certain information or
attained skills that are identified within curricular objetives (Wortham,2001)
• Children are assessed at the beginning of the school year in order for
teachers to better understand the individual differences that occur amoing
children.
• In addition, also give teachers information realted to a children's current
level of developmental and educational functioning and may suggest to
the teacher ways to design learning activities for individual children or the
class in general.
• While assessing children at the beginning of the year provides a starting
place, it must be kept in mind that children should be assessed
continuously throughtout the year. This information is useful for planning
and modification of the curriculum.
• Students listed as high-growth believed
they could get better at math the more
they practiced and used in-depth study
techniques. Students listed as low-growth
were more likely to believe that math
ability is something you're born with and it
can't be improved, and they relied more on
memorization when studying.
• "While intelligence as assessed by IQ
tests is important in the early stages of
developing mathematical competence,
motivation and study skills play a more
important role in students' subsequent
growth," Kou Murayama - Predicting Long-
Term Growth in Students’ Mathematics
Achievement:The Unique Contributions of
Motivation and Cognitive Strategies