The work sampling system: Reliability and validity of a performance assessment for young children

Performance assessment, an alternative approach to assessing students' achievements in school, refers to assessment methods that allow students to demonstrate their skills, knowledge, behavior, and accomplishments across a wide variety of classroom domains on multiple occasions. This article presents data concerning the reliability and validity of the Work Sampling System with 100 kindergarten-age children. A psychometric design was implemented in which children were enrolled in classrooms where the Work Sampling System was used and were also given individually-administered norm-referenced assessments in the fall and spring; in addition, their teachers completed a behavior rating scale in the spring. Results show that the Work Sampling checklist and summary report have very high internal and moderately high interrater reliability. The Work Sampling System accurately predicts performance on the norm-referenced achievement battery, even when the potential effects of gender, maturation (age), and initial ability are controlled. These data provide empirical support for the reliability and criterion validity of this performance assessment system as a measure of children's overall school achievement in kindergarten. The discussion covers issues raised by the study's design and by the use of performance assessment in general.     

Socioeconomic Status and Preschoolers' Mathematical Knowledge: The Contribution of Home Activities and Parent Beliefs

Research Findings: Children from families of lower socioeconomic status (SES) enter kindergarten with less developed mathematical knowledge compared to children from middle SES families. This discrepancy is present at age 3 years and likely stems from differences in the home learning environment. This study reports SES-related differences both in the quantity and quality of mathematical support children receive in the home and in parent beliefs about early mathematical development and then compares both with children's performance on a comprehensive mathematics assessment. Participants included 90 children in their 1st year of preschool (2 years before kindergarten entry) and 88 children in their prekindergarten year (the year just prior to kindergarten entry). Both cohorts were balanced for SES and gender. The results suggested minimal SES-related variation in mathematical support received in either cohort but clear SES differences in parents’ beliefs about early mathematical development. Middle SES parents of children in both cohorts held higher expectations in terms of skills they expected children to possess by age 5, as well as a more accurate understanding of which skills are within the developmental range of most children by age 5. These differences accounted for unique variance in children's scores on the mathematics assessment. Practice or Policy: Implications are discussed.     

SAIL: A School Where the Arts Connect with Real Learning

Increasing numbers of educators and parents are recognizing that traditional educational models can be unsupportive and, at times, alienating to children, particularly those with special needs. SAIL, a public charter* school in Washington, DC, for children 5–12 years old (often labelled as having special needs), has used an innovative education model that infuses the arts in learning experiences. Providing a unique physical and social environment, an arts‐based curriculum, and authentic assessment methods, SAIL is steadily achieving or exceeding its goals after two years of operation. This paper describes the work of SAIL. ^* A charter school is an autonomously governed public school designed to educate students in non‐traditional ways and obligated by its charter to monitor and record its performance.     

Relations among child care quality, teacher behavior, children's play activities, emotional security, and cognitive activity in child care

Eight hundred forty children (435 girls) enrolled in full-time, center-based child care participated in the study. Children ranged in age from 10 to 70 months. Sixty-six percent of the children were European American, the remainder African American. Children's play activities and cognitive activities as well as their relationships with caregivers were observed within the child care setting. The study tested the prediction that variation in children's cognitive activities could be directly and indirectly explained by child care quality, positive social interaction with teachers, and children's play activities and attachment security with their child care teachers. The prediction was examined and at least partially supported in eight subsamples of infant-toddler and preschool age European American and African American children in subsidized and nonsubsidized child care. Specifically, in seven of the eight subsamples, 15 to 30% of the variability in children's cognitive activities could be predicted from positive social interaction with teachers, attachment security, and participation in creative play activities.     

Addressing the needs of Latino children: A national survey of state administrators of early childhood programs

This study consisted of a national survey of 117 state administrators of early childhood programs to examine specific challenges, strategies, and beliefs around serving Latino children and families. Four types of early childhood programs were represented: child care, Head Start, Part B-Section 619 preschool special education programs, and Part C infant-toddler programs for children with developmental disabilities. The survey consisted of 48 Likert scale items across six subscales to gather information about challenges and strategies for serving young Latino children and their families, as well as administrators’ beliefs about issues related to language development and early literacy learning, child assessment, approaches to support equity and diversity, and parental involvement. Administrators generally agreed on the importance of preserving a child's home language and the need to assess young children in either their home language or their home language and English. All four groups held similar views about strategies. The study found less agreement among groups on issues related to challenges, approaches to promoting diversity, and strategies for promoting parental involvement.     

Between authenticity and cognitive demand: Finding a balance in designing a video-based simulation in the context of mathematics teacher education

A key challenge for teachers is the on-the-fly assessment of student learning. Video-based simulations may provide a tool for measuring assessment skills and a basis for learning environments in teacher education. Based on the framework for teaching practice by Grossman et al. (2009), considerations for designing video-based simulations that balance authenticity and cognitive demand are derived. Results show that participants perceived the developed simulation as authentic, were mostly able to rank students according to their overall mathematical argumentation skills and showed potential for learning in their detailed assessment of students. Thus, results indicate the internal validity of the video-based simulation.     

The contribution of rubrics to the validity of performance assessment: a study of the conservation–restoration and design undergraduate degrees

Rubrics have attained considerable importance in the authentic and sustainable assessment paradigm; nevertheless, few studies have examined their contribution to validity, especially outside the domain of educational studies. This empirical study used a quantitative approach to analyse the validity of a rubrics-based performance assessment. Raters evaluated the performance of 84 first-year university students producing service-learning projects for the Conservation–Restoration and Design degrees. The study data comprised the 9240 scores given by two teachers and three student tutors, who assessed the students’ projects on three occasions during the semester. Factor analyses confirmed that the students attained the expected learning outcomes and made significant learning progress. This learning progress was also corroborated by analyses of variance. The attainment of the learning goals and the evidence of learning progress demonstrated the validity of the inferences drawn from the assessment system. In addition, the results highlighted the need to consider rubrics as a first-order teaching resource and not only as a scoring tool.     

Authentic assessment: creating a blueprint for course design

Authenticity has been identified as a key characteristic of assessment design which promotes learning. Authentic assessment aims to replicate the tasks and performance standards typically found in the world of work, and has been found to have a positive impact on student learning, autonomy, motivation, self-regulation and metacognition; abilities highly related to employability. Despite these benefits, there are significant barriers to the introduction of authentic assessment, particularly where there is a tradition of ‘testing’ decontextualised subject knowledge. One barrier may be the lack of conceptualisation of the term authentic assessment sufficient to inform assessment design at the individual course level. This article tackles that omission by a systematic review of literature from 1988 to 2015. Thirteen consistent characteristics of authentic assessment are identified leading to the classification of three conceptual dimensions: realism, cognitive challenge and evaluative judgement. These dimensions are elaborated and used to propose a step-based model for designing and operating authentic assessment in individual higher education subjects.     

Judgement and production of drawings by 3- to 10-year-olds: Comparison of declarative and procedural drawing knowledge

In this experiment, 80 children between the ages of three and ten produced and judged drawings of a person and a house. Two alternative hypotheses were tested. Under the first hypothesis, young children have internal models of persons and objects which are comparable to those of adults, but they have problems implementing their knowledge and planning and managing the graphic activity. If this hypothesis is true, we should obtain an interaction between age and type of task (production vs. judgement). Under the second hypothesis, children’s drawings are a direct reflection of their internal models of the items drawn. This hypothesis predicted a significant positive correlation between performance on production and judgement. In the judgement task, the subjects were presented with pairs of drawings and asked to indicate the more elaborate drawing. For the house and the man drawing, children by the age of three were able to correctly determine the most elaborated of the two presented drawings. A strong interaction was obtained between age and type of task (production or judgement), due to the fact that the difference between production performance and judgement performance decreases with age. The discussion suggests a limited cognitive capacity hypothesis to account for the results, and proposes some possibilities for future studies.     

Purpose and Authenticity in Early Literacy Assessment

Literacy and the assessment of literacy dominate current educational and political discussion with claims about falling standards (Gorman and Fernandes 1992), and effective remedies (Brookes et al 1996, Sylva and Hurry 1995). But answers to the question of how best to assess early literacy will depend on the purpose for which assessments are carried out. This paper is particularly concerned with assessment of literacy of children aged 3–5 years. There seems to be a growing acceptance that tests provide an answer to the problem of assessment but many tests are flawed due to a lack of authenticity in the tasks they ask children to respond to. This paper discusses the characteristics of three main purposes in early literacy assessment: teaching, management and research, and concludes that clarity of purpose is crucial if assessment of early literacy is to be properly understood, and if future assessment instruments are to be authentic.     

TEACHING INDUCTIVE THINKING TO HIGHLY ABLE CHILDREN

Two criteria were used to identify highly able kindergarten children: assessment by teachers and an IQ ≥ 115 on Raven's Progressive Matrices. In this way, 16 highly able children were found, matched pairwise according to age and IQ, and then randomly allotted to two treatment conditions. In one condition the children were trained using a program for fostering inductive thinking, whereas the children in the other condition continued their normal kindergarten activities. Based upon a new theory of inductive reasoning, the training was expected to have a positive effect on intelligence test performance. Results showed that all of the trained children outperformed their matched counterparts. It was concluded that, even with highly able children, the level of cognitive functioning can be improved, and that training of inductive thinking is an effective means to this end.     

The interaction of assessment format and examinees' perceptions of control

Performance assessments have been touted for their multidimensional and ‘realworld’, or authentic, appearance, yet this complexity is at the heart of the most serious problems in the use of performance assessments. If performance assessments are more multidimensional and situational, then perhaps performance assessment scores represent other things besides the construct of interest. This study empirically explored that possibility, namely that scores on a performance assessment reflect a motivational variable (perception of control), in addition to the construct intended, while an objective test does not. Data from high school Spanish students who took an objective test, a performance assessment and a measure of perceptions of control suggest that perceptions of control indeed predict performance assessment scores but not objective test scores.     

Improving engagement: the use of ‘Authentic self-and peer-assessment for learning’ to enhance the student learning experience

Innovative assessment practices have the potential to shift the way universities function. By focusing on well-designed assessment tasks, where students are expected to work collegially and are actively involved in self- and peer-assessment, the opportunity to engage students in the assessment process is realised. This article contends that students are significantly and detrimentally disengaged from the assessment process as a result of traditional assessments that do not address key issues of learning. Notable issues that arose from observations and questioning of students indicated that vast proportions of students were not proofreading their own work were not collaborating on tasks; had not been involved in the development of assessment tasks; and that students had insufficient skills in relation to their ability to evaluate their own efforts. These facts led the author to conceptualise new models of assessment focusing on authentic learning and the authentic assessment of that learning through self- and peer-assessment. Authentic assessment for sustainable learning (AASL) and Authentic self-and peer-assessment for learning (ASPAL) were trialled with approximately 300 undergraduate education students at the University of Notre Dame Australia. This article explains the conceptual development of the models and provides justification for their implementation.     

"真实性评估"在信息技术课教学评估中实现与应用

真实性评估,弥补了传统评估只重视基础知识的学习而忽略学生社会知识建构的历程的不足。信息技术课的评价方式引入真实性评估,学生不但学到了书本知识,更能利用所学的知识去解决现实生活中所遇到的问题。在信息技术课中采用传统评估和真实性评估相结合的方式,更有利于学生能力的提高及促进教师教学过程的改进。     

Preservice Teachers' Development and Implementation of Science Performance Assessment Tasks

Preservice teachers in a science methods course were provided instruction on performance assessment, then guided through a design and implementation process of performance assessment tasks. We assessed the effect of designing and implementing a performance assessment task on preservice teachers' understanding of standards-based assessment. The findings show that these preservice teachers improved in their understanding of assessment as a formative process as well as their science content understanding of the topic addressed in their designed task. We found that preservice teachers need to experiment with performance assessment tasks in an authentic context in order to understand the full potential and value of the task.     

Creating thinking schools through authentic assessment: the case in Singapore

Using Singapore as an example, we argue that schools need to equip and encourage teachers to adopt authentic assessment in teaching and learning so as to develop the students’ higher-order thinking. The importance of teaching and assessing higher-order thinking in Singapore classrooms is encapsulated in the vision of ‘Thinking Schools’ launched by the Ministry of Education in 1997. Underpinning this vision is a shift from conventional assessment to authentic assessment. Unlike conventional paper-and-pencil tests that focus on knowledge reproduction and low-level cognitive processing skills in artificial, contrived contexts, authentic assessment tasks underscore knowledge construction, complex thinking, elaborated communication, collaboration and problem solving in authentic contexts. However, the creation of thinking schools in Singapore remains a constant challenge as many teachers tend to rely on conventional assessment and are often ill-prepared to implement authentic assessment. By presenting the findings from a recent empirical study, we propose that schools build teacher capacity by providing ongoing and sustained professional development on authentic assessment for teachers.     

Assessment Practices and Students Knowledge Profiles in a Problem-based Curriculum

Learning Environments Research - Since the mid-1980s, many new terms have enriched the assessment literature, such as performance assessment, authentic assessment, direct assessment and...     

职前教师教育课程评价：范式、理念与方法

对教师专业以及良好教师形象的不同理解,决定着职前教师教育课程评价的不同选择。将教师定位为“反思性实践者”,就意味着职前教师教育课程评价需要一种能检测真实情境中的实践性知识的评价范式——基于表现的评价。基于表现的职前教师教育课程评价所遵循的理念包括检测全面而整体的素养、引发真实情境中的表现、发挥学习者的主体作用和促进专业的持续发展。档案袋评价法、微格教学评价法、课堂观察评价法、开放性试题与小论文是基于表现的职前教师教育课程评价的几种常用的评价方法。     

Assessing National Curriculum Mathematics in England: Exploring Children's Interpretation of Key Stage 2 Tests in Clinical Interviews

This paper initially discusses recent changes in mathematics education and assessment in England and Wales against the background of research on mathematics performance and assessment. It then reports findings from qualitative research with 10–11 year olds undertaken with the object of exploring the validity of the pilot pencil and paper tests in mathematics developed as part of the assessment programme for the English and Welsh National Curriculum in 1993 and 1994. Fifteen children from across the 'ability' range were asked to work through a selection of items in the situation of an individual clinical interview. This enabled in-depth data to be collected about their interpretation of and performance on the items. This paper focuses in particular on items where the ambiguity of the boundary between everyday knowledge and mathematics might be expected to lead to problems for children in interpreting the tasks required of them by the test items. The results show that the nature of the items might well have prevented some of these children, in the context of a paper and pencil testing situation, from demonstrating mathematical capacities and understandings they seem to have possessed. Their initial performance does not always seem to have reflected their underlying competence as demonstrated in the extended interview.     

Guiding children's behavior: The issue of compliance

Parents and teachers need to be aware of the principles of development in order to guide children appropriately. The process of guidance begins with attempts to baby-proof the environment, such as arranging the nursery in anticipation of the arrival of the infant. During the infant-toddler stage, adults may view their acts of altering the child's physical environment as their responsibility, not connecting such actions to the development of a discipline plan. In fact, the adults are beginning to develop a positive atmosphere so that the child has a healthy environment in which to grow. Sandy Bailey is Program Coordinator for the Montana Resource and Referral Netword, a statewide program based