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An information website on what constitutes high quality assessment with young children: A guide for Early Childhood Educators.
Is formal norm-referenced assessment an unnatural approach to the assessment of young children?
Little Johnny came home from preschool one day, and his mother asked him what he did that day. "I went to outer-space, mom," replied Johnny. "There was a funny looking man there who asked me lots of questions." "Oh really," replied Johnny's mom as she chuckled with delight at her son's creativity, "and just who was this man?" "I'm not sure," replied Johnny, "but I think I heard someone call him the school psychologist."
Formal assessment has been referred to as an unnatural approach to the evaluation of young children. Formal assessment methods require children to sit for periods of time, concentrating on tasks, and answering series of questions. To a young child who is not used to being assessed in a question-answer format, this situation could seem like a trip to outer-space. The child may become uncomfortable in this type of a situation and apprehensive to answering questions.
The natural characteristics of young children may also pose a problem in the testing situation. Children's attention spans are short, and their moods are variable. They tend to be hedonistic, giving into their own desires, and may resist doing activities that do not seem attractive to them at the time. Even if a child finds an activity to be attractive, they may be overwhelmed by primary physiological needs such as hunger or sleepiness.
In addition to these road blocks, traditional preschool and low incidence tests almost exclusively measure fast developing skills of children. The abilities that develop at the fastest rates predict adult ability least well, so our predictive power based on measurement of these skills is reduced greatly in young children. Infants pose an even greater problem with their proneness to developmental spurts and lags, which decreases the reliability of test scores.
Based on this information you may ask the question: "Why then would one want to even attempt to assess the skills and abilities of young children if formal assessment poses such problems?"
Formal assessment of young children, despite the aforementioned problems, can be extremely useful in the diagnosis of childhood disorders and in the planning of interventions for educational difficulties. This, however, is true only if assessment is done in the proper way by individuals who are knowledgeable and trained in the assessment process. It is the clinical judgment of the individuals who are completing the assessments, and their interpretation and integration of information gathered from assessments, that determines the worth of the information that is gathered. Furthermore, formal assessment should be only one part of the assessment process. The results gained from each method of assessment should be pulled together to gain a complete and whole picture of the child who is being evaluated.
To find out more about assessment with young children, please attempt the POP QUIZ on the following page. This quiz will help you to understand the differences between testing an assessment, at what times assessment is appropriate, what skills are assessed in the assessment process, and the methods, in addition to formal, norm-referenced testing, that can be useful in gathering information about a child.