Assessment Flashcards
Why Assess?
- to improve learning experiences so that all children can benefit from their educational experiences
Assessment..
- to ascertain knowledge
- identify strengths and weaknesses
- purpose of diagnosing, referring to services, planning instruction or curriculum, evaluating programs and determining school readiness
- Assessment informs treatment planning!
Decisions regarding assessment
- amount of structure (structured, semi structured, unstructured)
- Methods to use (observation, interview, testing, work sampling, surveys)
- Child vs family focus
- current vs historical focus
- level of parent involvement
- what should be assessed?
Assessment
MULTIPLE METHODS are crucial!
- any one method will give only its perspective
- Any form of assessment is subject to bias
Culture in assessment
- importance of transcending egotism
- integrating group identity and individuality
assessment and issues
- developmental appropriateness
- qualifications of assessor
- consent from parent AND CHILD
- privacy
Screenings
- process to IDENTIFY children who have a high probability of showing delayed or atypical development
- usually one measure, whereas assessments are usually multiple measures
Developmental Screening
- brief, efficient
- inexpensive
- easy to learn
- objectively scored
- reliable and valid
- culturally fair
Interviewing
- active listening key
- extract information from them (creates a power differential)
- opportunity to build relationship with family though (how you are just as important as what you do)
- helps you understand what they see as reality
- integrate results (record data, look for common themes, note emotional reactions, develop story, history taking vs history making)
Weaknesses: time constraints, prior knowledge can bias interviewer, feeling critical of parents can damage rapport, feelings of over-responsbility (wanting to give parents ways to fix it)
Interviewing Children
- relational rationality rather than scientific
- process is more important than the end truth
- pleasing or not letting down interviewer is important to kids
- let them use manipulatives, sit diagonally instead of right across from them, build rapport, let them get familiar with room/you
- children know more than we think they do!
- explain confidentiality to them
- ask open ended questions, ask informational less sensitive questions first
- engage in drawing
- use simple sentences
- refrain from asking leading questions
- repeat when necessary
- use multiple choice when needed
- use scenarios
- reassure and praise effort (not answers)
- follow child’s lead
- children as young as 4 can provide relevant info
- interviewer must observe reactions and behaviors
Funnel Technique
- ask child to tell you a story or ask them open ended questions, follow up by asking clarifying questions, follow those questions buy asking more narrow questions for details
McArthur Story Stem Battery
- enact every day, non fantasy scenarios and have child finish story - predictive of emotional difficulties
Berkley Puppet Interview
- two puppets make opposite statements and the examiner asks the child, “How about you?”
- Can be used on children as young as four
- Reports validated on peer relationships, anxiety, depression, conduct problems, aggressive behavior and achievement motivation
Example: “I have a lot of friends at school/I don’t have a lot of friends at school.” “What about you?”
Structured
- explore relatively circumscribed topics and provide users with a standardized method for eliciting information
- maximizes reliability and validity, minimizes interview bias, produces consistent data
WEAKNESSES: focus on diagnosis, not intervention - requires extensive training
- gather limited information on non-diagnostic facts
- unable to ask follow up questions
- may compromise rapport
Unstructured
- Allow for maximum flexibility in information gathering, potentially greater focus on problems considered relevant by the child or family
- assessment of a broader range of clinical information
- only real constraints on unstructured interviews are imposed by the interviewer’s theoretical model and practical considerations, such as obtaining demographic information for clerical functions
- can lead to inconsistent or incomplete formulations
- should be used in combination with OTHER data
Strengths: highly flexible, tailor to individual needs, helpful in problem conceptualization and treatment planning
Weaknesses: minimal structure may lead to problems with reliability and validity, comparison between unstructured interviews is difficult, requires high level of interviewing skills
Semi-Structured
Advantages: allows flexibility while maintaining a standard format
- provides a framework
- allows for follow up as needed
Disadvantages: weak reliability and validity
Observation
Advantages: professional experience will influence how you see the child, observations provide a lot of data, behavior is often context bound, get to witness interactions with others, sensory stimuli, preverbal children (advantage)
Disadvantage: Errors of omission, errors of commission (recording what is not seen), have to be aware of your own bias and subjectivity, how you record data is important, time consuming, can’t observe history, have to make inferences about subject’s internal states
Methods of observation
- narrative
- annecdotal (what you think is meaningful)
- running record (everything possible)
Event sampling
- number of times during entire period the behavior is seen
- infrequent and brief
Interval
presence or absence of behavior in short intervals within long observation period (not counting how many times, just DID it happen during that period)
- frequent and brief
Duration
length of time the behavior occurs
- infrequent and sustained
Latency
length of time between behaviors
- frequent and sustained
School Readiness
Educational demands + Supports + child’s knowledge and skills
- Congress Definition: knows about letters (can identify 10), receptive and expressive vocab, associate sounds with written words, recognize words as a unit of print
- Teacher Definition: healthy and well-rested, communicates needs verbally, enthusiastic and curious
- Parent definition: count to 10, know letters and color, know address and phone number, share, communicate, follow directions
State Early Learning Standards: Physical well being, social and emotional development, approaches to learning, language, cognition and general knowledge
- Child definition: know and follow rules, know where things are and what to do, making friends
Maturationist Approach to School Readiness
- children are ready to start school when they reach a level of maturity that enables them to sit quietly, focus on work, follow directions and interact socially with peers
Environmentalist Approach to School Readiness
- readiness in terms of practical characteristics of child’s behavior, guidance/teaching experiences lead to skills child has, external evidence of learning, focus on what child can do /how they behave
Social Constructivist Approach to School Readiness
- rejects the idea that readiness comes from within the child or something the child should be evaluated on. Instead, sees readiness as something constructed based on social and cultural values.
- shifts focus to the community
Interactionist approach to school readiness
- focuses on children’s learning and the school’s capacity to meet the individual needs of students
Self Regulation and School Readiness
- transition to school is a critical time in young kid’s lives.
- successful transitions require strong self-regulation in order for students to successfully function and learn
- increasing demands on social and self reg skills in addition to literacy, numeracy and writing skills
- children who enter kindergarten without adequate self-regulation are at high risk for a host of difficulties (peer rejection, low academic achievement)
- promoting adaptive self-regulation in early childhood is key to ensure long term school success
Components of executive functioning key to school success
- attentional/cognitive flexibility (focus and sustain attention on a task while ignoring other distractions)
- working memory (keeping information in mind while processing it helps kids remember classroom rules)
- inhibitory control (stopping impulsive responses)
ESI-R
- designed to identify children who may need special educational services in order to perform successfully at school
- identify possibility of learning or handicapping condition
- not intended as an IQ test or school readiness test
- intended to survey a child’s ability to acquire skills, rather than child’s current level of achievement
- not all children who are identified will need specialized support- meant to catch the “maybes”
Screening
- Does: identify children who may need further evaluation, provide professionals with limited information, helps to prevent secondary delays or disorders, assists in hypothesis testing, single tool used, may lead to an assessment
- inform about areas of strength and weaknesses
- pre-referral process
- preventative
Doesn’t Do: provide diagnostic labels, serve as school readiness tests, suggest long term curriculum goals, provide date for pre/post exams, evaluate programming, replace a thorough assessment
When might you re-screen?
- know that developmental instability is more likely than stability
- parent may report behavior as atypical that day
- environment may have been disruptive
- child falls just below cut off
Screening tools
- Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment Program
- Ages and Stages Questionnaire (easy to use, specific skills and parent concerns assessed)
- Batelle Developmental Inventory (well standardized, need training to conduct)
- Bayley Scales of Development (high level of training required, may not be practical in pediatric settings)
_ Brigance (parent report for ages 0-2)
Assessment
- ongoing and dynamic process that determines function, informs instruction and intervention and evaluates outcomes
Theory of Assessment
Why are you collecting information? *PURPOSE
What information are you collecting? *DATA
How are you collecting information? METHOD
How are you making sense of the information? *INTERPRETATION
Hawthorne Effect
- when subject changes their behavior due to knowing they are being observed
Observation as Generalizable
how well does what we see during an observation represent the behavior of interest outside the session?
low generalizability = low validity
Structured activity vs. naturalistic
structured= directed task naturalistic= observe participants as they would if not observed
Inter-rater reliability
consistency of observers in recording behaviors
- when behavior is well-defined, reliability is high
- if vaguely defined, reliability tends to suffer
Social/Emotional Assessments
Objective reports= child behavior checklist
Functional Analysis (when there is a problem behavior)
Projectives = individuals must impose their own structure on the item, stimuli are unstructured, structure is meaningful, indirect method, freedom of response, interpretations are broad
(all projective test share an assumption that when people try to make sense of ambiguous stimuli their understanding is determined by their feelings, experiences, needs and though processes)
- inkblots, story cards, incomplete sentences
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
- 31 cards depicting people in a variety of ambiguous situations (1 blank card)
- examinee is asked to create a story about each picture
- scoring/interpretation (content analysis of themes that emerge)
- assessing locus of problems, nature of needs and quality of relationships
(lack of norms though, clinicians rely on qualitative impressions)
Play and Drawings
- have dual functions
- way of working out normal developmental issues
- way of communicating emotional distress
- good way to build rapport
- kids telling you indirectly about themselves
- safer way to express self
- symbols and metaphors stand in for elements in kids’ lives
- must keep in mind what are developmentally appropriate abilities
- must pay attention to behavioral reactions, emotional state and what they tell you about it
Play and assessment
helps you see social skills, cooperation, conflict negotiation, following of rules
- popularity and group membership
- understanding of social roles
- emotional expression and regulation
- inner conflicts/concerns
Performance Assessment: Work Sampling
- methods that enable children to show their knowledge, skills and personality through performing tasks that are of their daily experience
- a continuous progress
- guidelines and checklists
- portfolios
- summary reports
- focus on individual students, attention to all areas, alignment with national standards, relevance to instruction, data to be aggregated, standardized training and administration, extensively researched
Curriculum embedded assessment
- based on students typical classroom performance
- observe and document child’s skills and accomplishments
- keep track of what individual children know and do
- plan developmentally appropriate classroom experiences
Instructional Assessment
- primary focus on individual learning
- clarifies what students are learning and have begun o master
- guides instructional decision making
Portfolios
- purposeful collection of student work
- shows quality of work, demonstrates progress, displays work across domains, involves children in evaluating their own work, assists with planning
Summary reports
- combine information from checklists and portfolios
- rate student performance and progress
- highlight strengths, weaknesses, concerns and plans
On-demand assessment
- objective assessment that measures specific skills out of the classroom context
- comparing to a normative sample
- how well can child respond to a particular set of test items
Three types of standards
1) program standards: describe form and structure of early childhood settings, regulate structural elements
2) Content standards: knowledge, skills, competencies children are expected to master
3) Performance standards: concrete specific examples of competent, skilled knowledgable behavior (rubric, scoring framework)
Why assess?
To determine when services or special considerations are needed to enhance a child’s functioning
IFSP/IEP
individualized plans aimed to meet needs of young children with disabilities and their families thereby enabling them to benefit from their educational experiences
IEP process
referral, screening, written request, evaluation, eligibility meeting (all must take place within 60 school days)
- multidisciplinary
- parent involved
- native language
- across domains
relationships and assessment
- different people can bring out different behaviors!
- power of relationships in assessment key
Environmental considerations
- physical environment
- learning environment
- social environment
Reliability
- consistency of observations or measurements
- degree of error in an instrument
- high measurement error= low reliability
values or r (correlation coefficient) range from 0 to 1
.80 or higher are considered good!
(inter rater, test-retest, internal consistency)
Validity
the degree to which a test measures what it is designed to measure
- face validity (look right)
- content validity (contents of a test is representative of domain)
- concurrent validity (degree to which test scores are correlated with a related but independent set of test scores or behaviors)
Predictive validity (can predict behavior or test scores in future)
Adaptive behavior
developmentally bound
- culturally bound
- behavioral competence vs. problems
- typical performance vs. pure ability
- 3 dimensions (conceptual, social, practical)
