Broad Assessment information

Question 1

testing

Answer 1

screening
assessing
writing a report
refer for services

Question 2

what screening does

Answer 2

• Identify children who may need further evaluation
• Provide professionals with limited information about a child from the outset
• Helps to prevent secondary delays or disorders due to early intervention
• Assists in hypothesis testing about a child
• Usually a single tool is used to do a screening
• A screening may lead to an assessment that will hopefully have multiple measure to look at

Question 3

what screening doesn’t do

Answer 3

• Provide diagnostic labels
• Serve as school readiness or entry tests
• Suggest long-term curriculum goals
• Provide date for pre/post exams
• Evaluate programming
• Replace a thorough assessment; no designed to diagnose the child, but to help make observations about if the child could benefit from further services.

Question 4

Screening types in early childhood

Answer 4

developmental screen

preschool screen

Question 5

developmental screen

Answer 5

o Process to identify children at high probability of showing delayed or atypical development
o To identify the child’s strengths and weaknesses

Question 6

preschool screen

Answer 6

o Process to identify children at high probability of school failure
o To show school readiness or if they are ready to move to the next level

Question 7

when might you rescreen

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

what else to use screening for

Answer 8

• If done well, screening can anecdotally inform teacher and parents about areas of strength and weakness
o Who can then focus on supporting these areas
• Can be seen as part of a pre-referral process to shore up child areas of difficulty perhaps before services needed
o Preventative
• As long as you keep the purpose and limitations of the screening tool in mind you can use it on the whole class and more than one child at a tie, but do not use the screening tools to make major decisions.

Question 9

Screening tools

Answer 9

the early periodic screening, diagnosis, and treatment (EPSDT) program

Tools for Birth-three
Ages and Stages QUestionaire

Batelle Developmental Inventory

Bayley Scales of Development

Brigance

Child developmental Inventory

Question 10

the early periodic screening, diagnosis, and treatment (EPSDT) program

Answer 10

o Child health component of Medicaid
o Mandated in all states
o Designed to close health care gap by providing necessary service to low income children
o Screening services “to detect physical and mental conditions” must be covered at periodic intervals.

Question 11

Ages and Stages Questionaire

Answer 11

 Easy to use
 Wieldy used
 Specific skills and parent concerns assessed

Question 12

Batelle Developmental Inventory

Answer 12

 Well standardized

 But need training to conduct

Question 13

Bayley Scales of Development

Answer 13

 High level of training required

 May not be practical in pediatric settings

Question 14

Brigance

Answer 14

 Parent report for ages 0-2
 Training required
 May not be practice in pediatric settings

Question 15

Child Development Inventory

Answer 15

 Measures 8 domains

 May be more in-depth than a screener

Question 16

What is the PURPOSE of Assessment

Answer 16

to determine when services or special considerations are needed to enhance a child’s functioning

Question 17

Why assess?

Answer 17

•	Ascertain knowledge and Identify strengths and weaknesses
o	Diagnosis/Identification
o	Refer to services
o	Plan instruction/curriculum
o	Program evaluation
o	Determine school readiness

Question 18

How do we assess

Answer 18

•Screening-> ASSESSMENT
 Testing, Observation, Portfolios
 Teacher/parent rating

Question 19

theory of assessment

Answer 19

•	Purpose
o	Why are you collecting information?
•	Data
o	What information are you collecting?
•	Method
o	How are you collecting information?
•	Interpretation
o	How are you making sense of the information?

Question 20

observation

Answer 20

why observe
why not observe
hawthorne effect (observe effect)

• With observation you are trying to get as close to real life as possible
• Some observations are better than none, but make note of all outside considerations and recommendations

Question 21

why observe

Answer 21

o To see the child through your own lens

o Observation is crucial to make sure you get eyes on everything that could be important to the outcome.

Question 22

why not observe

Answer 22

o If you know the observation is going to be limited it would not be worth it to observe
o Make sure the observation you saw is typical with the child’s behavior

Question 23

hawthorne effect (observe effect)

Answer 23

o When subject changes their behavior due to knowledge they are being observed.
o Aka: behavior reactivity

Question 24

is observation “generalizable”

Answer 24

• Must ask
o How well does what we see during an observation represent the behavior of interest outside the session?
 E.g. feeding behavior in clinic vs. at home
• Low generalizability = low validity
o Likely unhelpful to diagnosis & intervention
• Generalizability depends
o Mixed for behaviors in children

Question 25

structured activity vs. natualistic

Answer 25

• Structured Activity:
o Observe participants completing a directed task
• Naturalistic
o Observe participants engaging as they would if not observed

• How related are they?
o Depends on behavior and methods, but likely modest
• Which is more predictive of behavior?
o Again mixed, but possibly naturalistic

Question 26

Methods of observation

Answer 26

narrative
rating
quantitative

Question 27

narative

Answer 27

anecdotal

running record

Question 28

anecdotal

Answer 28

 Pro: Taking main themes of observation and writing them down
 Can pay attention more to what’s going on
 Con: You may miss the context or complete situations

Question 29

running record

Answer 29

 Recording everything you see during the time you are observing.
 Better to use when you have a vague reason for observation

Question 30

rating

Answer 30

o Scales and Checklists:

 Based on observations of the child over time

Question 31

quantative

Answer 31

event
interval
duration
latency

Question 32

event

Answer 32

Number of time during entire period behavior seen

 E.g. biting, hitting, pushing

Question 33

interval

Answer 33

Presence or absence of behavior in short intervals within period
Crying, arguing

Question 34

duration

Answer 34

Length of time behavior occurs

Recording how long they cry

Question 35

latency

Answer 35

Length of time between behaviors

Question 36

which method to use

Answer 36

• Infrequent/Brief = Event
• Infrequent/Sustained = Duration (Temper Tantrum)
• Frequent/Brief = Interval (On task/off task, eye contact)
• Frequent/Sustained = Latency (On task behavior/independent play)

Question 37

inter-rater reliability

Answer 37

• Consistency of observers in recording the behavior
• Largely dependent on clarity of operational definition of behavior to be measured
o When behavior to be observed is well-defined, the inter-rater reliability tends to be high.
o If vaguely defined, inter-rater reliability tends to suffer.

Question 38

social-emotional assessment

Answer 38

“objective reports”

behavioral assessment of social emotional assessment

projective: Essential Features

Projectives Hypothesis

Personality testing

projective techniques

Question 39

“objective reports” of social emotional assessments

Answer 39

oCBCL/CTRF = Child behavior checklist
 Should only be used when concerned about child’s behavior
 Does not pick up “normal” variation
 Not good at picking up competencies
 Norms available for different societies
 Can be used in IEP’s
• Although it does not provide diagnosis

oDB-DOS
oVineland adaptive behavior

Question 40

Behavioral assessment of social emotional assessments

Answer 40

o Functional Analysis
o Review of other methods

•When do you focus on behavior?
o	1. When there is a problem
	E.g. Child “acting out” in class
	Child cries frequently
	Child cannot sit still in seat

Question 41

Personality Testing

Answer 41

o	Objective:
	Rating scales
	Empirical develop
	Social desirability
	Lack spontaneity
	Young kids report?

o	Projective:
	Ambiguous stimuli
	Clinical develop
	Harder to “fake”
	Very unstructured
	Used with young kids?

Question 42

projective techniques

Answer 42

o	Testing
	Inkblots
	Story Cards
	Incomplete Sentences
o	Interview and Observation
	Drawings
	Play

Question 43

school readiness

Answer 43

• The definition of school readiness depends on whom you ask. School readiness can be defined as being ready to succeed academically as well as physically and socially.
o Congress believes that school readiness has everything to do with a child learning language and grammar
• Parents want their child to be able to:
o Count to 10+
o Know letters and color
o Know add”ress and phone number
o Also sharing, communication and following directions
• Children believe they should:
o Know and follow teacher rules
o Know where things are and what to do
o Making friends

Question 44

meisels approaches to readiness

Answer 44

• Maturationist
o Naturally emerges within the child
• Environmentalist
o Guidance/teaching experiences leading to skills child has making them “ready for school”
• Social Constructivist
o Community or local culture defines readiness
• Interactionist
o Child learning + school’s capacities to meet individual needs of the child

Question 45

how is readiness measured

Answer 45

•	Developmental screeners
o	Child’s developmental level
o	Potential to acquire skills
o	Possible need for early intervention
•	Intelligence/Ability tests
o	Child’s cognitive/intellectual capacity
o	Discrete abilities
•	Readiness Tests
o	Discrete skills associated with school success

Question 46

Locally Developed Measures

Answer 46

• Human figure drawing:
o Have the child draw a human figure and see what shapes or body parts they include.
• Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test:
• Visual Motor Integration Tests:
• Denver-II (screening test)
•Language Test
o ****Each test has its problems and we have to describe why it would be able to work for the reasons we want it to and fight both sides of the test, the pros and cons.

Question 47

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 47

	31 cards depicting people in a variety of ambiguous situations
o	Including 1 blank card
o	Select 20 per administration
	Examinee is asked to create a story about each picture
	Scoring/Interpretation:
o	Content analysis of themes that emerged from the stories
	Aggression
	Love
	Family
	Uses
o	Assess:
	Locus of problems
	Nature of needs
	Quality of interpersonal relationships
	Critique
o	Selection of cards is not standardized
o	Lack of norms
o	Clinicians rely on qualitative impressions

Question 48

Standard Drawing Techniques

Answer 48

	Draw a person (DAP)
	House-tree-person
	Kinetic family drawing
	Not just the drawing
o	Behavioral reactions
o	Emotional state
o	What they tell you about it

Question 49

Performance Assessment vied from the Perspective of Work Sampling

Answer 49

performance assessment

instructional assessment

the work sampling system

curriculum-embedded assessments

portfolios

Summary reports

•Purpose of Work Sampling System (WSS)
o To evaluate the validity of the WSS as a measure of children’s learning and academic achievement
•Conclusion
o WSS is a valid and effective assessment of children’s learning
o Teachers and families are satisfied with the system and become more so as they have more experience with it.
o Students in WSS classrooms make significant achievement gains.

Question 50

performance assessment

Answer 50

o Methods that enable children to demonstrate their knowledge, skills and personality through performing tasks that are of their daily experience.
 Within the child’s lived context and not out of context

Question 51

instructional assessment

Answer 51

o Primary focus on individual learning
o Not designed to rank and compare students or to be used for high-stakes
o Clarifies what students are learning and have begun to master
o Guides instructional decision-making and provides instructionally relevant information to teachers
 Observational assessment can look at larger domains, but then must get more specific to ensure people are looking at the same things (e.g. expressive language, vocabulary)

Question 52

the working Sampling system

Answer 52

o A continuous progress, instructional assessment that uses:
 Guidelines and checklists
 Portfolios
 Summary reports
• These all help teachers document and assess children’s skills, knowledge, behaviors and academic achievements from preschool to grade 5.
o Characteristics of the Work Sampling System
 Focus on individual students
 Attention to all aspects of curriculum
 Alignment with national standards
 Relevance to instruction
 Data to be aggregated
 Standardized training and administration
 Extensively researched

Question 53

curriculum-embedded assessment

Answer 53

o Assessments based on students typical classroom performance
o Purpose of a Performance-Based Checklist
 Help Teachers:
• Observe and document children’s skills and accomplishments
• Keep track of what individual children know and can do
• Plan developmentally-appropriate classroom experiences throughout the year.

Question 54

Sandards and Informal Assessments in Early Childhood

Answer 54

on-demand assessments
curriculum-embedded assessment
observational assessment

Question 55

on-demand assessments

Answer 55

o Objective assessments that measure specific skills out of the classroom context.

•What we can learn from On-Demand tests:
o How a particular child’s performance compares to a normative sample
o How well a child is able to respond to a particular set of test items

Question 56

curriculum-embedded assessment

Answer 56

o Assessments based on evaluative information obtained from children’s typical classroom experiences

Question 57

what observational assessments can teach us

Answer 57

o What children are learning and have begun to master
o How well children are doing in relation to standards and expectations
o How to guide instructional decision-making and create instructionally relevant learning opportunities