Broad Assessment information Flashcards
testing
screening
assessing
writing a report
refer for services
what screening does
- 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
what screening doesn’t do
- 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.
Screening types in early childhood
developmental screen
preschool screen
developmental screen
o Process to identify children at high probability of showing delayed or atypical development
o To identify the child’s strengths and weaknesses
preschool screen
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
when might you rescreen
- 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
what else to use screening for
• 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.
Screening tools
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
the early periodic screening, diagnosis, and treatment (EPSDT) program
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.
Ages and Stages Questionaire
Easy to use
Wieldy used
Specific skills and parent concerns assessed
Batelle Developmental Inventory
Well standardized
But 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
Training required
May not be practice in pediatric settings
Child Development Inventory
Measures 8 domains
May be more in-depth than a screener
What is the PURPOSE of Assessment
to determine when services or special considerations are needed to enhance a child’s functioning
Why assess?
• 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
How do we assess
•Screening-> ASSESSMENT
Testing, Observation, Portfolios
Teacher/parent rating
theory of assessment
• 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?
observation
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
why observe
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.
why not observe
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
hawthorne effect (observe effect)
o When subject changes their behavior due to knowledge they are being observed.
o Aka: behavior reactivity
is observation “generalizable”
• 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
structured activity vs. natualistic
• 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
Methods of observation
narrative
rating
quantitative
narative
anecdotal
running record
anecdotal
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
running record
Recording everything you see during the time you are observing.
Better to use when you have a vague reason for observation
rating
o Scales and Checklists:
Based on observations of the child over time
quantative
event
interval
duration
latency
event
Number of time during entire period behavior seen
E.g. biting, hitting, pushing
interval
Presence or absence of behavior in short intervals within period
Crying, arguing
duration
Length of time behavior occurs
Recording how long they cry
latency
Length of time between behaviors
which method to use
- 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)
inter-rater reliability
• 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.
social-emotional assessment
“objective reports”
behavioral assessment of social emotional assessment
projective: Essential Features
Projectives Hypothesis
Personality testing
projective techniques
“objective reports” of social emotional assessments
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
Behavioral assessment of social emotional assessments
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
Personality Testing
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?
projective techniques
o Testing Inkblots Story Cards Incomplete Sentences o Interview and Observation Drawings Play
school readiness
• 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
meisels approaches to readiness
• 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
how is readiness measured
• 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
Locally Developed Measures
• 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.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
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
Standard Drawing Techniques
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
Performance Assessment vied from the Perspective of Work Sampling
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.
performance assessment
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
instructional assessment
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)
the working Sampling system
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
curriculum-embedded assessment
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.
Sandards and Informal Assessments in Early Childhood
on-demand assessments
curriculum-embedded assessment
observational assessment
on-demand assessments
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
curriculum-embedded assessment
o Assessments based on evaluative information obtained from children’s typical classroom experiences
what observational assessments can teach us
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
