Assessment in early years education

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability

Assessment is a daily business in education and exists in different forms, for different purposes and on different levels. Generally, assessment implies observing the outcomes of something and assigning a value to what is observed (Stake 1991). Consequently, assessments do not provide objective data, but through the course of assessment, aspects without value become systematically divided from the aspects considered to have great value (Scriven 1991). In this process, policy makers, educators and other important stakeholders are provided with opportunities to give 'interpretations in an operational way' (cf. Lundgren 1990, p. 35), which means the information can be used for specific purposes to guide and improve certain aspects of education. This can also lead to a situation where other aspects may be concealed, or at least receive less attention.

1991

This paper is intended to raise questions and identify some of the problems posed by assessment within an educational setting. The principal aim is to offer a springboard for discussion, rather than to propose a specific plan of action. It is also worth stressing that assessment designates more than just examinations (public or otherwise). As teachers and educators, we are constantly making assessments of our students, passing official, unofficial, conscious and unconscious judgements. These are judgements which inevitably influence our attitudes to our jobs, our performance and our teaching or administrative styles. They also have wide-ranging repercussions on the attitudes, performances and future of our students. They are judgements based on a complex series of assumptions which we habitually make about, for instance, what education involves, the nature of schooling, school structures and their aims, the learning process as it relates to human development. What follows is largely inspired by a desire to identify and scrutinize some of the most recurrent of these assumptions.

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2004

The completion of the first ten years of this journal is an occasion for review and reflection. The main issues that have been addressed over the ten years are summarized in four main sections: Purposes, International Trends, Quality Concerns and Assessment for Learning. Each of these illustrates the underlying significance of the themes of principles, policy and practice, which the journal highlights in its subtitle. The many contributions to these themes that the journal has published illustrate the diversity and complex interactions of the issues. They also illustrate that, across the world, political and public pressures have had the effect of enhancing the dominance of assessment so that the decade has seen a hardening, rather than any resolution, of its many negative effects on society. A closing section looks ahead, arguing that there is a move to rethink more radically the practices and priorities of assessment if it is to respond to human needs rather than to frustrate them.

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice,, 2008

The paper reports on the findings of a Learning and Skills Research Centre (LSRC) funded study investigating the impact of different modes and methods of assessment on achievement and progress in post-secondary education and training. Data were collected across Advanced-level academic and vocational preparation programmes in schools and colleges, work-based training, and adult education settings. The paper reports that clarity in assessment procedures, processes and criteria has underpinned widespread use of coaching, practice and provision of formative feedback to boost achievement, but that such transparency encourages instrumentalism. It concludes that the practice of assessment has moved from assessment of learning, through assessment for learning, to assessment as learning, with assessment procedures and practices coming completely to dominate the learning experience and 'criteria compliance' replacing 'learning'.

This dissertation discusses how a team of teachers understand and practise assessment in the context of an early childhood centre. The early childhood sector has experienced raised expectations in terms of formal assessment in the decades since the education reforms of the late 1980s. These raised expectations have coincided with a shift in thinking about assessment, with the emergence of a new paradigm for assessment, and it is the combination of these that creates a number of tensions for practitioners in the sector. This shift in thinking in the early childhood sector' in this country has been shaped by changes to notions assessment, more universally. Educational assessment has been dominated by the positivist paradigm for over a century, however, as these positivist beliefs are questioned, a new paradigm has emerged for assessment, an interpretivist paradigm. For early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand this interpretivist paradigm sits comfortably with the sociocul...

Critical Quarterly, 2000

Teaching English as a Foreign Language, 2018

Experienced foreign language teachers make use of a variety of approaches for evaluating their learners' competence development. These approaches range from appraisal of a learner's answer in the classroom to fully-fledged formal tests. In this chapter, some basic issues of language assessment will be outlined and discussed with a focus on classroom-based language assessment because this is what foreign language teachers spend much time and effort on. In fact, it is estimated that regular teachers can spend as much as a third to one half of their time on assessment-related activities (cf. Coombe et al. 2012c). And indeed, assessment can be seen as the extrinsic engine that drives learning-in any case, assessment and learning should be seen as inseparable in the foreign language classroom. As such, it is vital that teachers are in a position to integrate assessment with instruction so that they use appropriate forms of teaching. The capacity for this has come to be called language assessment literacy. Language assessment literacy is the ability to critically evaluate language tests, compile, design and monitor language assessment procedures in foreign language contexts, grade and score them on the basis of theoretical knowledge.

Education 3-13, 2012

is a researcher and teacher, contributing to a range of initiatives focussing on science, moral education, early years and professional development.

In any society, education is the most efficient means of enhancing improved quality of life for everyone. Its mission which is to "lead forth" and "cause to develop" the potential of every child could be most effectively achieved if teachers are trained to exploit its rich and close etymological relationship with assessment. But unfortunately, though the results of several studies have shown that teachers spend at least a third of their professional time involved in assessment-related activities, and contrary to recommendations by professional organizations in education, many persons are certified to teach with little or no training at all no basic classroom assessment skills. Some teachers training institutions do not offer courses that impart such skills at all, while some make such courses optional as if assessment is an optional duty of the classroom teacher. Teachers incapacitated by such programmes lack the essential skills to "sit beside" a growing child to collect valid data or information with which to ensure valid exploration and identification of potential and the maximization of its growth and development. This seems to be important contributing factor in the observed trend of poor academic performance by learners in school systems in which such teachers abound.