Performance-Based Assessment
6
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Pretest
1. Worksheets, exams, and screening tests are examples of performance-based assessments. T/F
2. Performance-based assessments provide an authentic evaluation of student learning. T/F
3. Performance-based assessment is particularly vulnerable to error based on bias. T/F
4. Portfolios are best used to collaborate with children. T/F
5. Rubrics are easy to design and use. T/F
Answers can be found at the end of the chapter.
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Introduction
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
ሁሁ
ሁሁ
ሁሁ
ሁሁ
ሁሁ
Define and give examples of performance-based assessment.
Identify the advantages and understand the limitations of performance-based assessment.
Identify multiple approaches used to assess performance in early childhood.
Explain the purposes and development of portfolios.
Design and implement rubrics to evaluate performance-based outcomes.
Gretchen is a Head Start teacher in a predominantly migrant community in south Florida. Her
17 students range in age from 2 to 4 and are developmentally diverse. This Head Start curriculum is aligned with Florida’s Early Learning and Developmental Standards, which are developmentally based. These standards encourage a play-based curriculum, so Gretchen arranges
authentic and culturally relevant activities. Children will be guided in free play, art, sensory
experiences, science projects, embedded early mathematics, stories and dramatic play, and gross
and fine motor activities.
Gretchen spends the first few weeks of school establishing routines, such as transitions, meals,
and independent and group play. Additionally, Gretchen talks with, reads stories to, and is a play
partner to all the children as she carefully observes her students’ social development, problemsolving skills, early academic competencies, movement, and communication strengths. She recognizes that 4-year-old Kristen is well liked by the other children, is eager to learn, has already
learned to count to 20, and can reliably retell the main parts of a story after a single reading. At
the same time, 3-year-old Stetson prefers playing alone, is easily provoked to aggression, and has
a difficult time sitting through the reading of a short book, either alone or with other children.
It could be said that Gretchen conducted performance-based assessment of her students. That is,
she observed Kristen, Stetson, and the rest of her children performing curriculum-based activities. Through the remainder of the year, Gretchen will continue to make performance-based
assessments to be used to plan activities to challenge Kristen and scaffold Stetson, as well as the
other 15 children in the class. Outcomes for these activities will also be continuously monitored
to ensure that all children make adequate progress.
Introduction
Like all early childhood educators, Gretchen has continuous access to the most authentic evidence of learning—the products of children’s performance on daily activities. By using artifacts of learning continuously and purposefully to gauge growth and make decisions, Gretchen
expertly uses performance-based assessment as a best practice to facilitate high-quality early
childhood education. This chapter will explain the purpose and execution of a wide range of
performance-based measurements, all of which Gretchen might use to assess and make decisions regarding Kristen and Stetson.
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Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.1
6.1 Performance-Based Assessment
Performance-based assessment (PBA) can be defined as the collection of data on students
as they engage in learning. When a teacher either directly or indirectly asks a child to “show
me,” an opportunity for PBA is created. Unlike traditional assessment procedures that tend
to focus only on outcomes, PBA involves both the process of learning as well as the product
(Palm, 2008). According to Schurr (2012), “Performance assessment is an assessment of how
well individuals can do something, as opposed to determining what they know about doing
something” (p. 8). Likewise, ECE professionals are concerned with how children behave while
completing a task—their focus, effort, language, movement, interactions with others, and
so on—as well as the degree to which the outcome of their actions conform to criteria or
standards.
A term closely aligned with performance-based assessment is authentic assessment, or the
assessment of children in real settings as they perform the actions and engage in the activities
that are expected of them in those settings. Of all the forms of assessment, authentic assessment has been recognized as a foundational practice in early childhood education (SusmanStillman, Bailey, & Webb, 2014). EC educators generally agree that the work of children is play,
since it represents the most developmentally fertile context for cognitive, social, and language
growth. With this in mind, authentic curriculums are play based.
If a play-based curriculum is authentic, it follows that assessment should align with the curriculum and be authentic as well. For example, although it is common to assess a child’s
understanding of prepositions using a worksheet, it is also possible to assess understanding
by observing this skill in the context of building blocks, where children are asked questions
such as “What will you put under your airport hangar?” The latter is an example of authentic
assessment, where under is assessed in the context of play. Whenever assessment is decontextualized, or removed from activities that are developmentally appropriate, the assessment
becomes less authentic.
Authentic assessment reflects the understanding that knowledge and skills alone are insufficient to learning. Acquired knowledge and skills must be applied in order to be meaningful.
Furthermore, learned information must be meaningfully applied in real-world situations if
the learning process is to be complete. Actionable learning (or performance) filters personalized, acquired knowledge and skills through problem solving, creativity, and often a group
process. These processes are essential aspects of 21st-century learning priorities that include
problem solving, creativity, collaboration and team skills, technology, critical thinking, and
communication.
Performance-based assessments are compatible with developmentally appropriate practices
that guide ECE because they assess children as they engage in authentic early childhood activities and play. Subsequently, aligning both process and product requires tools that differ from
other forms of assessment. Performance-based assessment may be both a formative and a
summative process. However, it is most commonly used formatively, whereby ECE professionals regularly measure student progress in the context of daily learning routines and activities.
Examples of performances that provide a context for or indicators of child development are
social and dramatic play, self-regulation and rules-based behavior, inquiry learning in science,
applied projects involving social sciences and math, reading, and storytelling. Table 6.1 lists
some examples of PBA artifacts, which are derived from activities such as interviews, games,
directed assignments, live performance, and projects.
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Section 6.1
Performance-Based Assessment
Table 6.1: Performance-based artifacts
Performancebased assessment
artifacts
Interviews
Description
Example
Teachers ask questions about
specific content, and students
respond orally.
After the class took a field trip to the local
zoo, the teacher interviewed the students
individually to find out what they observed
and what new information they gained.
Games
Teachers engage in games with
students or observe students
playing games together.
Directed
assignments
Teachers give specific tasks for
students to complete.
Performance
Teachers observe students
engaged in performance
situations.
Projects
Students create works to
demonstrate understanding.
While watching two students play a game in
which they matched cards with digits to cards
with dots, the teacher observed that both
students had mastered an understanding of
the numbers 1 through 9.
During language arts time in a first-grade
classroom, one of the center choices is
sentence sequencing using sentence strips
and a large pocket chart. The teacher
can observe how the students sequence
sentences from a mentor text that the class
explored together during group time.
During the spring music performance, the
teacher observed students’ ability to sing
songs and move to music.
After taking a field trip to the local fire station
and reading many books about fire trucks,
the students created a fire truck out of a
refrigerator box, and the teacher observed
skills in multiple domains.
The terms performance-based assessments and authentic assessments are used in this chapter to describe methods of evaluating behavior in vivo. In vivo means assessors observe
and evaluate children as they live, engaging in developmentally appropriate activities,
solving real-life problems, and interacting with others in meaningful contexts—all of which
enable children to adapt to the changing expectations in their lives. Performance-based
assessment can be viewed in two ways: a general understanding of the nature of performance/authentic assessment, and a more formal definition comprising three dimensions
by which an assessment qualifies as performance based (Frey, Schmitt, & Allen, 2012).
That is, performance activities must take into account three dimensions: (a) the context
or setting within which an activity is assessed must be real or natural for young children,
(b) children must demonstrate their learning through authentic activities, and (c) the procedures used to score children’s performance to determine progress must align with the
performance expectations. See Table 6.2 for examples of the three assessment dimensions
of performance assessment.
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Section 6.1
Performance-Based Assessment
Table 6.2: Examples of selected assessment dimensions of performance
assessment
Grade
Context
Children
Scoring example
Example 1: prekindergarten
(performance)
After hearing the story
of Little Red Riding Hood,
props from the story
(red hoods, baskets, wolf
masks, and so on) are
provided in the dramatic
play area (natural setting
for young children).
Children perform the
various roles and act out
the story Little Red Riding
Hood.
Example 2:
second grade
(project)
After reading about
mammals over multiple
days in small group
reading, children examine
several skulls of real
mammals (connection to
real world), noting the
sizes of the teeth, lengths
of the noses, and locations
of the ears.
Children draw and label
a mammal head of their
choosing.
This activity was
designed to address
learner outcomes for
listening comprehension,
vocabulary development,
problem solving, and
social interactions. Skill
mastery was assessed
using questions while
reading the story and
anecdotal notes for the
play.
Source: Adapted from Frey, Schmitt, & Allen, 2012.
This activity was
designed to address
learner outcomes for
reading comprehension,
vocabulary development,
and art. Skill mastery was
assessed using questions
while students were
reading, a checklist for
mammal skull anatomy,
and a rubric for their
mammal skull drawings.
Performance-based assessments can be as different and unique as the classes in which
they are used. In addition to working naturally in ECE settings, PBAs have numerous other
advantages.
Advantages of Performance-Based and Authentic Assessments
Performance-based assessment is essentially bound to observational procedures. Determining how children do things requires that they be watched. Watching children while they are
engaged in meaningful activities is an informal assessment process. That is, teachers assess behavior as it Reflection
unfolds rather than explicitly eliciting a series of behaviors according to a scripted format. As mentioned in Give an example in which subjective assessment
previous chapters, observational assessment of chil- may provide an advantage to decision making
while also being a possible source of error in
dren’s abilities is always subject to observer bias and
decisions made.
therefore somewhat subjective.
Using authentic or performance-based assessment is a best practice in early childhood education (Bagnato, Goins, Pretti-Frontczak, & Neisworth, 2014). As mentioned earlier, early childhood philosophy tends to endorse authentic experiences as a medium for whole child growth
and development. Therefore, assessing children within meaningful activities should uncover
meaningful evidence of their growth and development. If children are assessed playing with
toys they engage with every day, interacting with people with whom they are familiar, and
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Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.1
doing tasks that are similar to ones they regularly tackle, then the most “truthful” evidence of
development is likely to be revealed from the assessment.
On the other hand, when assessment is conducted in situations that are contrived, outcome
data are less likely to faithfully reveal a child’s abilities. A child may perform poorly in a testing
situation that features new materials, assessors, time limitations, settings, and task requirements. However, this same child might successfully demonstrate an understanding of the
same concepts during a class project—a feat that is relevant to real-world expectations. For
example, a student may struggle to complete a worksheet that requires her to count clusters
of dots (a contrived task), but when the same child is asked to count how many classmates
will be eating lunch and get the corresponding number of napkins, she will have no problem
counting classmates or napkins (a real-world expectation).
Performance-Based and Authentic Assessments Practices
Because learning in authentic contexts involves a wide range of ages and developmentally
appropriate activities, many methods have been developed to assess children’s growth during these activities. For example, a professional working with infants would likely use different means of assessing developmental progress than a kindergarten teacher, as the type
and complexity of behaviors and contexts will vary substantially. However, a set of guiding
principles applies to all performance-based assessments, including establishing learning
objectives, using multiple measures of growth, documenting and analyzing performance for
decision making, and using performance data to give children feedback.
Learning Objectives
As with all assessment, PBA begins with identifying the learning outcome. Knowing what a
child should gain from an activity informs the type of assessment. For example, if the learning
objective is to “develop a sense of humor,” a child might be most likely to “show” a sense of
humor during free or dramatic play or by listening to a funny story. However, humor is somewhat subjective and may therefore be best assessed by observing children during activities
and using a subjective scale such as a rubric or a Likert scale (discussed later in this chapter).
After clearly identifying learning objectives (see Chapter 4), performance activities are
designed to achieve those outcomes. Assessment starts at the beginning of instruction in order
to determine baseline or beginning skill levels. Suppose a teacher found upon preassessment
that, of nine children, six had already mastered a concept. This information would be used
to determine whether instruction was needed for those six children and to plan appropriate
activities for the other three who had yet to learn the concept.
Using the Right Assessment
Having established learning objectives, the next step is to consider a range of assessment
tools that are most likely to reliably reveal mastery. As seen from the previous example, it
is possible to assess student gains in more than one way. Selecting the right tool requires
the assessment to align with the target behavior by answering the question, “Is the learning
objective met?” It also must be practical for an assessor to execute, given other demands. For
example, a checklist (see Figure 6.1) is a quick way to indicate that a skill such as “humor in
young children” has been observed—but it is imprecise. If a child seems to be progressing
typically, a checklist is a perfectly reasonable choice. However, if a child is experiencing difficulty, a more intensive assessment may be necessary—such as daily observation to assess the
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Section 6.1
Performance-Based Assessment
frequency of “uses/acknowledges humor with prompting” or anecdotal notes about when a
child intentionally did something that others found funny, the context in which the child created humor, and who found the child’s actions funny.
Figure 6.1: PBA in action: Checklist
ሁሁ Checklists are a quick and easy way to document behaviors as they are observed in everyday
interactions.
PBA in Action: Checklists
Example
Date:
October 5,
2015
Repeats
behavior that
draws laughter
Laughs at
funny
stories
Tells jokes
Makes faces,
sounds, body
postures, or
products that are
humorous for age
Children
Anjali
Bernie
Chas
Gaul
Kalisha
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
As with other forms of assessment, it is essential to collect performance evidence that may
be used to make instructional decisions. How these data are collected depends on the tool
selected. For example, if a professional wants to analyze a 13-month-old child’s language
competencies, a good way to gather data is to videotape interactions between the child and
mother. The evidence can be viewed over and over, and no information is likely to be overlooked. In this case the tool can be very detailed and follow administrative procedures for
quantifying the types and numbers of words used by the child, his or her social responsiveness, and receptive responses to the mother’s communication in a natural context.
Similarly, consider a preschooler’s art project in which children are making animal masks.
Assessment can be conducted during the project to gauge behaviors such as holding a crayon,
sustained attention to the task, sharing materials with others, and spontaneous communication about the animals and masks. In addition, the final mask may be assessed using a rubric
that takes into account traits such as neatness, creativity, relationship between features of
the mask to real animals, and problem solving. The mask itself can be put into the child’s
portfolio.
Still other performance measures are only administered during the process itself. For example, if children are learning new songs and dances for the school holiday festival, an assessor
might watch the final performance and rate students’ skills on a scale to indicate mastery of
words and hand gestures to the songs, motor skills in learning steps and executing movements, social skills in following directions, and confidence in performing in front of a crowd.
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Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.1
Providing Feedback
An important element of teaching and learning is providing feedback (Hattie, 2009). Performance-based assessment is no different. Using outcome data from PBA, EC professionals
can relate what children do well and what they need to work on to move to the next level.
For example, a teacher may say to a child who has just built a bridge with blocks, “Meg, you
built a bridge so that I can walk the little man over without getting wet—good planning!” and
“If you add some blocks to the ends, the bridge will be high enough to drive your blue boat
under.” Feedback may also come in the form of questions that move children forward. “Meg,
your bridge is not quite long enough to get over the river. Could you build it so my little man
won’t get wet?”
While PBA outcome data are useful to professionals, sharing these data with children further
enhances learning. Even for very young children, immediate feedback in the form of smiling,
clapping, and hugging tells children that they have done well. More complex feedback based
on performance assessment that communicates how infants and toddlers may advance can
be made by modeling, physically helping, and providing simple verbal prompts. For instance,
if infant Josie is capable of cruising along furniture, she could be helped transition to free
standing by holding her hand, encouraging her to move away from furniture, and excitedly
saying, “Josie, you’re standing all by yourself!” This physical support and praise will motivate
Josie to try to move away from furniture and stand independently, which will eventually lead
to walking.
Case Study
Mr. McDonald was recently hired to teach Early Head Start. As he described it, the children
came to school the first day like “bright shiny pennies.” They were cheerful and could not
wait to show him their new shoes and school supplies. However, Mr. McDonald had no
idea what these children were capable of or where he should begin teaching. His plan was
to design a range of developmentally appropriate activities for the first several days that
would permit him to get to know each child. Through these activities, he believed he would
be able to assess students’ language, knowledge, social and motor skills, and behavioral
strengths.
The following are some of the activities Mr. McDonald used during the first week of school:
• Each day during circle time, he introduced a new song, including “The More We Get
Together,” “I’m a Little Tea Pot,” “The ABCs,” and “The Wheels on the Bus.”
• Each day, he set up several centers from which children could choose to play. These
featured manipulatives, a water table, blocks, and dramatic play.
• During meals, children ate family style, and Mr. McDonald sat at a different table each
day so he could talk with new children.
Critical-Thinking Questions
1. Is Mr. McDonald using performance-based assessment?
2. What tactics might improve McDonald’s understanding of the children in his class?
Suggest a few.
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Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.1
Avoiding Issues With Performance-Based Assessment
Although PBA offers clear advantages in understanding children and linking learning activities to developmental growth, there are also serious considerations regarding the use of
informal assessment procedures. In fact, research comparing the relative strength of authentic assessment to more conventional measurement methods (such as worksheets) is lacking, even though teachers tend to prefer authentic measurements to traditional assessment
(Bagnato et al., 2014). This preference may be linked to several factors, including a belief that
authentic assessment data are more meaningful, that less formal assessments take less time
to collect data and score, or that the assessments more closely align to student outcomes and
activities.
Just as standardized tests must accurately measure what they intend to measure (validity)
and must do so consistently (reliability), it is also important for informal measures to assess
a child honestly and dependably. If a teacher’s filter is clouded by preconceptions about a
child—based on history, biases, or the teacher’s own measurement skills—assessment of the
child’s performance can be skewed and in turn influence the child’s opportunities. In fact,
there is evidence that ECE personnel are alarmingly unreliable when classroom assessment
outcomes are compared to external evaluation of the same children (Brookhart, 2011). To a
significant degree, EC educators’ assessments of children are influenced by assessor subjectivity (Waterman, McDermott, Fantuzzo, & Gadsden, 2012).
To increase the quality of PBA outcomes and subsequent decisions, the following practices
should be implemented:
1. Multiple types of assessment should be used to provide depth, strengthen perceptions, and reduce the possibility of measurement bias. For example, anecdotal notes
about a child’s social interactions with peers may be supported with videos, photographs, and social-skills checklists with the same behavior targets.
2. Interobserver reliability is necessary to calibrate the accuracy of data collection. It is
recommended that teacher judgments occasionally be compared to those made by
a second observer to see if there is agreement. Interobserver reliability is especially
helpful if a professional is using the data to make important programmatic decisions
regarding a child.
3. Performance-based assessments should require a formative process, rather than a
summative one; PBAs are generally informal measures, and therefore they tend to
lack the technical validation of standardized tools that are useful in making credible summative decisions. On the other hand, PBA data can and should be paired
with more formal assessment information whenever an important decision is being
considered.
4. ECE professionals should practice designing and scoring performance-based assessments for authentic learning opportunities. Collaboration with and feedback from
skilled mentors will help emerging assessors align assessments to accurately evaluate progress toward learning outcomes.
5. PBA should be constructed to permit direct observation of behaviors so as to indicate mastery of learning outcomes. Assessments that rely on opinions about behaviors that cannot actually be seen are much more subject to bias. For example, it is
common for teachers to assume that a child who is learning quickly is motivated.
Making this assumption about what is going on in a child’s head (which cannot be
seen) actually constitutes a barrier to intervention because unseen phenomena are
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Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.1
inaccessible and cannot be directly taught or assessed. In contrast, it is possible to
observe how often or how well a child completes a task when given the opportunity. A child can be seen completing a task, whereas motivation must be inferred
from visible behaviors, such as task completion. Moreover, the amount and quality
of work completed can be compared from one opportunity to the next. If progress
toward task completion is unsatisfactory, intervention strategies might be evaluated and changed by collecting data using the same assessment. If behavior can be
described and scored in a way that is direct and observable—as through the use of a
running record as opposed to a rating scale—biased outcomes are less likely.
It may be noted that the practices described above are not unique to PBA. Multiple measures,
reliability of measurement, practice, using data to make decisions, and relying on objective
descriptions of behavior are all common to other kinds of assessments. Because PBA relies
heavily on observational methods, these practices are reintroduced here to remind readers of
strategies they can use to enhance the accuracy of PBA outcomes.
Challenge
Using the Venn diagram (see Figure 6.2), classify the following characteristics as being
representative of either traditional assessment, performance-based assessment, or both.
• Compares students to other students’ performance
• Assesses depth of knowledge well
• Measures information that is hard to quantify for comparison
• Measures low order thinking
• Scoring is easy and fast
• Scoring is objective
• Assesses small subset of knowledge
• Scoring is subjective
• Scoring is complicated
• Assessment is part of the learning process
• Learning and assessment take place over time
• Capable of assessing creativity well
• Students are actively engaged in self-assessment
• Many possible answers may be correct
• Assesses wide scope of knowledge
• Measures behavior where students work cooperatively
• Student reacts to fixed stimulus
• Measures behavior where student acts individually
(continued)
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Section 6.2
Portfolio Approach to Assessment
Challenge (continued)
Figure 6.2: Comparison of assessment characteristics
ሁሁ This Venn diagram is used to classify the characteristics of learning that are associated
with traditional and performance-based assessment or both.
Traditional
Assessment
PerformanceBased
Assessment
Refer to the Appendix for the answers.
Source: Based on Schurr, 2012.
6.2 Portfolio Approach to Assessment
In addition to conventional assessments such as screenings and standardized tests, early
childhood education has long relied on developmentally appropriate, informal, and authentic
measurements of children in individual and group contexts. The documentation generated
by both formal and informal assessments can be used together in a way that tells children’s
stories as they grow over time. Portfolios provide one way of aggregating information from
various assessment sources to tell these stories.
Reasons to Use Portfolios
Although portfolio assessments may come in many forms, a portfolio is a metaphorical storyboard used to document children’s ongoing work. Portfolios may be used informally or may
be very purposeful. For example, some ECE professionals may add documents to a portfolio whenever they think the information is useful. Other professionals plan their portfolio to
include regular documentation that illustrates progress according to targeted learning standards and behavioral observations.
There are three key reasons to use portfolios. First, they provide parents with actual evidence
of a child’s work, and serve to provide an opportunity for periodic and ongoing communication
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Portfolio Approach to Assessment
Section 6.2
between parents and teachers. Parents and educators can appreciate growth across domains
by viewing portfolio entries across time. Second, portfolios provide comprehensive evidence
of progress that can be used to make instructional decisions. Portfolios have traditionally
been used to archive informal assessment information, but it is also acceptable to include
more data-driven student performance work. Finally, portfolios are increasingly being used
in a more summative way to document program quality.
Consider the following example. Suppose Ms. Rosa started a three-ring-binder for each of the
students in her preschool classroom at the beginning of the school year. Throughout the year,
she added developmental checklists, work samples (particularly art and writing), dictations
of stories, anecdotal notes (often about math and science reasoning), pictures (frequently of
things that could not be kept, like block towers), video recordings, and observational assessments that documented actions (such as dramatic play or gross motor skills) to each child’s
portfolio. She organized everything by curricular domain (language, motor, cognition, art and
music, social, self-concept) and date to document how each of her students grew and changed
over the year. She used the portfolios to guide parent teacher conferences in the spring. It
took Rosa several years to master this carefully orchestrated process of archiving documents,
but the portfolios she now creates meaningfully assess progress while excluding unnecessary
or irrelevant material.
Portfolio Logistics
Portfolios may take many forms. Children may have individual binders, poster boards, or
large folios that contain their work. As mentioned, a portfolio is not a haphazard collection
of interesting artifacts or finished work (Laski, 2013). Rather, portfolios are most powerful
when they adopt a focused and systematic approach to serve the purpose of assessment.
To that end, a teacher must first establish the purpose of implementing portfolio assessment.
All entries should then support that purpose. As a tool for assessment, one purpose is to
document progress. The domains being assessed may vary from child to child and teacher
to teacher. For example, Teacher A may establish portfolios to mark the emergence of early
phonemic awareness skills of 4-year-olds with the goal of rhyming mastery by the time the
children transition to kindergarten. At the same time, Teacher B may be more interested in
creating and maintain portfolios to document creativity and critical-thinking skills in her
4-year-olds, and thus may include a range of art and science project samples. Once the portfolio’s purpose has been established, it becomes clearer what trail of evidence is needed to
document progress toward the objective. Although there may be some overlap, the materials
included in these two sets of portfolios will clearly be very different.
The way in which portfolios are organized may also be linked to their purpose, though not
necessarily. Portfolios may be organized by theme or topic, chronology, type of product,
quality of work, and so on (Schurr, 2012). The point of organization is to facilitate the telling of a story through portfolio sharing. Professionals should adopt a completed portfolio
checklist (see Figure 6.3) that serves numerous purposes, including to provide a manifest
of entries, communicate the portfolio’s organizational logic, prompt child and teacher to
enter completed work, and notify archivists when evidence of critical artifacts has been
satisfied.
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Section 6.2
Portfolio Approach to Assessment
Figure 6.3: Portfolio organizational checklist
ሁሁ It is important to organize portfolios so they are informative and useful. That is often
accomplished using an organizational checklist of portfolio components.
PORTFOLIO CHECKLIST
Portfolio collection
Evidence entered and date
Check mark for completion
Demographic information
Beginning reading screening
Completed 9/3/14
Mid-year reading screening
Completed 1/7/15
End of year reading
screening
Evidence of Soc. Emotional
Standard 1.0
Photo of Sean working with
group on science problem
(12/15/14)
Standard Met: Proficient
Evidence of Cognitive
Standard 1.0
Observational notes of
Sean working independently to build a bridge
with recycled items
(10/3/14)
Standard Met: Proficient
Evidence of Language
Standard 1.0
Audio recording of Sean
telling a story during circle
(9/20/14; 1/5/14)
Portfolios are as varied as the teachers who create them. That said, there are certain key elements that drive a portfolio’s utility as an assessment piece.
Elements of a Portfolio
Many different kinds of authentic evidence may be included in a portfolio (see Table 6.3).
Regardless of the specific artifacts included, educators, children, and parents should all be
involved in a portfolio’s development and utility if it is to meet the criteria for performancebased assessment (Seitz & Bartholomew, 2008).
Table 6.3: Types of authentic evidence for portfolios
Element
Description
Writing samples
May include journal entries, stories, scribble progressions, and so on
Art projects
Examples of painting, drawing, coloring, cutting, gluing, and so on
Academic work sample
Videos
May include more formal academic documentation, such as traditional
worksheets, science journal entries, and data collection, like graphs
Used to record performances (that is, singing), physical accomplishments (that
is, climbing a structure on the playground), interactions (dramatic play with
others), and so on
(continued)
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Portfolio Approach to Assessment
Section 6.2
Table 6.3: Types of authentic evidence for portfolios (continued)
Element
Description
Photographs
Can document children’s physical abilities, like gross and fine motor skills, or can
be used to more easily collect other forms of evidence, like a large piece of art or
a sculpture created outside with natural materials—neither of which could be
kept or stored easily
Skills checklists
Anecdotal notes
Learning stories
Used to easily note which skills children have accomplished and when
Used to record children’s words and actions
Narrative account written by a teacher of an event that represents growth in a
child; examples can be found at http://tomdrummond.com/learning-stories
Four primary elements define a portfolio, according to Seitz and Bartholomew (2008):
1. Roles. Of the three players involved in developing a portfolio, each has particular
responsibilities, yet there is overlap. Teachers facilitate portfolio utility, students
create products for the collection, and parents provide support and encouragement.
All members are responsible for collaborating and reviewing entries while learning
from the process.
2. Big picture. Factors to be considered when envisioning a portfolio are standards and
learning outcomes and developmentally appropriate benchmarks. Each element
added to the portfolio should show evidence of progress toward learning outcomes.
3. The collection. The collection can be guided by the mantra “collect, select, reflect.”
When collecting content (photos, paper products, videos, anecdotal notes), the
pieces chosen should illustrate maturation in skills, knowledge, and behavior
according to mastery of assessment standards. Archival selection is thoughtful, and
not every item produced by a child should be entered. A teacher can help ensure the
portfolio contains sufficient evidence to document progress while also parsing the
collection for redundancy, irrelevancy, and efficiency. At regular intervals, careful
reflection on collection entries helps children appraise progress and consider what
has been learned and how they can use the information to grow. At the same time,
ECE professionals analyze the entries, looking for evidence of progress or concerns.
4. Presentation. Children are able to share their portfolio with parents or others, often
with help from teachers. As children become familiar with and reflect on their own
progress, they become ready to communicate their progress to others. Both informally (when children have made notable breakthroughs or accomplishments) and
formally (during school–family meetings), teachers can set aside time for children
to highlight their accomplishments. Since a portfolio reflects a child’s journey, the
emphasis is on the child’s personal growth, and the telling of this journey belongs to
children. This presentation should be a celebration of growth. Since there is always
growth, there is always cause for celebration.
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Section 6.2
Portfolio Approach to Assessment
Challenge
Look over the work samples from a 3-year-old provided in Figure 6.4. Decide which of
these artifacts you would include in a portfolio for this child, and why. Using the link below,
find your state early learning standards and document which 3-year-old standards (that is,
physical, language, social–emotional, cognitive) are being met by the samples you choose to
include.
State-by-state links to Early Learning Guidelines
Figure 6.4: Sample artifacts
A. Sticker and marker drawing of “a lady”
B. Alphabet BINGO card using water color
paints to mark known letters
C. Drawing of “mommy and daddy” and an
“elephant”
D. Thank you note, “Thank you for the
bracelet, Grandma. I love you.”
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Project-Based Learning and Assessment
Section 6.3
6.3 Project-Based Learning and Assessment
According to Gilbert (2005), knowledge has evolved from a noun to a verb. Knowledge is
more than what we have; it is what we do. That is, as we act on the world around us, knowledge is created and new meaning is derived. Participating in activities that channel our
experiences is knowledge in action, or project-based learning. Project-based learning is
consistent with Reggio Emilia, Montessori, constructivism, and other dominant approaches
to early education (Helm & Katz, 2011). Each of these approaches is based on the principle that children learn by doing and become active problem solvers, and in doing so make
meaning of their world.
The characteristics of project-based learning also align with the performance-based assessment criteria explained earlier, whereby children set about resolving a complex task, usually
in groups. In very early childhood, a project is often seen in the context of problem solving.
It has been found that parents facilitate problem solving by offering scaffolded tasks that
require age-appropriate critical thinking, such as saying to a 3-year-old, “The birds get hungry in the winter because there is not as much food. What can we do to help the birds?”
Even parents of infants can provide challenges, such as hiding a toy inside a box and asking,
“Where did the toy go?” (Carlson, 2003). In this case exploring a problem is the project, and
parents are interested in if or how the problem is solved, what kind of answer is found, and
if any related side effects, such as social skill and language development, accrue. These early
problem-based activities with parents have been associated with increased levels of self-regulation (Carlson, 2003).
Assessment of Project-Based Learning
There are many ways to assess children’s problem-solving performance in project-based
learning. Presentations, live performances, demonstrations, group work, and experiments
all offer students opportunities to engage in creative processes that require critical thinking. Even more traditional written assessments can become performance based if they are
designed around problems derived from the real world in areas such as social–personal,
performing and visual arts, community and global, as well as STEM problems—Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math (Schurr, 2012). Although some of these examples are not
appropriate for very young children, those in early elementary grades can engage in a range
of complex activities through project-based learning experiences.
Final products produced through project-based learning may be assessed using checklists,
rating scales, and observations, all of which can be used to document specific skills or standards. During the assessment, educators can also suggest alternate conclusions, changes,
next steps, and ways to improve (Schurr, 2012). Since deep learning is facilitated through
project-based learning, assessment should provide depth and breadth. In other words, educators should assess more than simple knowledge. Children’s work should reveal their ability to
use this knowledge, make connections, evaluate their work, and ask new questions. Assessment should come in a variety of meaningful forms, all intended both to measure progress
and enhance formative growth. For example, photographs, anecdotal records, skills checklists, and work samples can all be used to assess children’s new understandings over the
course of a project.
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Project-Based Learning and Assessment
Section 6.3
Rubrics
A common tool for evaluating artifacts and entire projects is a rubric, which breaks complex skills into smaller units and evaluates each separately (see Figure 6.5). Subscores can be
combined at the end to provide an overall assessment. For example, a teacher who wants to
assess a group presentation might evaluate the following subskills: knowledge of the subject,
communication, and collaboration. In developing the rubric, each of these subskills will be
further broken into qualitative descriptors that range from poor performance to exemplary
performance, with different point values assigned by proficiency.
Figure 6.5: Criteria behaviors for each quality indicator
ሁሁ Rubrics can be used to examine proficiency of skills or performance using a gradient scale. This
rubric looks at group work through a range of demonstrated levels of proficiency.
Quality indicators
Group work (criteria)
Not seen
Child does not engage with other children, does not complete tasks
assigned to role in group.
Emerging
Child engages with other children, completes some assigned
role tasks.
Developing
Child problem solves with other children, completes assigned role
tasks, and is integral to team completion of project.
Proficient
Child problem solves with other children, shows leadership in helping
and engaging other children, makes suggestions and includes ideas of
other children toward solutions, completes all personal work, and
helps define and work toward completion of project.
Rubrics have broad utility as a generalized assessment method and are applicable to most
learning outcomes. For example, a rubric may be used to evaluate handwriting samples, art
projects, and social and play skills. There are two main advantages of using rubrics over traditional assessments. First, assessors’ attention is focused on identifying criteria and measuring student work accordingly, thereby reducing the arbitrariness and unreliability in scoring.
Second, those who are being assessed can be told what is expected of their performance or
work based on the criteria established in the rubric.
The best rubrics give the steps in the assignment or task in explicit language
for the learner, identify the process that the learner must use, and describe
what the final product or performance will look like. Thus, the rubric guides
the learner in the acquisition of the skill, process or knowledge required.
(Mindes, 2011, p. 122)
Today rubric use is ubiquitous at all levels of education. One might think that because rubrics
are so widely used, they are also easy to create. This is not the case. To create a rubric that
is useful for both the evaluator and the student, the language must be direct and complete.
However, it is challenging to anticipate and describe all the possible ways that a person might
demonstrate progressive mastery of criteria, which might explain why rubrics are often frustrating to develop and unsatisfying to score (Andrade, 2005).
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Section 6.3
Project-Based Learning and Assessment
To alleviate this frustration, guidelines for building a project-based rubric are explained
below. Andrade (2005) and Baryla, Shelley, and Trainor (2012) provided the following tips
for designing quality rubrics:
1. Descriptions of criteria must be written clearly and define explicit, observable
behavior.
2. Criteria should be aligned to learning standards while avoiding jargon.
3. Criteria should be specific to the task; generalized rubrics tend to be less useful (for
example, a rubric that defines proficiency as “age-appropriate drawing” is much
more difficult to score than one that says “draws basic figures with three details”).
4. Quality indicators must be distinct; when descriptions under these categories are
vague or indistinct, the rubric is reduced to a pass/fail checklist, which is not the
intention.
5. Descriptions of behavior should be stated positively as much as possible (for example, writing “child gives suggestions to other children to help solve problems” is
positive, whereas “child does not help group solve problems by giving suggestions”
is discouraging).
6. Descriptions of behaviors within indicators should be succinct, not overly detailed
or lengthy.
7. Avoid using too many criteria, particularly when there may be overlap.
Designing a Rubric
The first step in designing a rubric is to identify the critical attributes of a high-quality project. For example, reasonable indicators for evaluating children’s work on a group project
may include positive team work, proficiency of language use, creativity of solutions, effort put
forth, content knowledge and production of a meaningful outcome. While teachers may use a
variety of sources to identify key criteria, learning outcomes and standards should always be
considered. Generally, four to six criteria are sufficient for selecting critical indicators.
Once the indicators have been selected, the next step is to set up qualitative categories of proficiency. As mentioned earlier, degrees of proficiency are basically an articulated Likert scale.
A Likert scale rates behavior on a gradient, ranging from low to high. People complete Likert
questions all the time but are usually not aware of how these are designed. The following is
an example of a Likert item (see Figure 6.6).
Figure 6.6: Sample Likert scale
ሁሁ Sample rating item that asks the reader to “rate child’s group work on a scale of 1 to 4.” The
numbers correspond with the categories of unsatisfactory (1), emerging (2), developing (3), and
proficient (4).
Rate child’s group work on a scale of 1 to 4
Unsatisfactory
Emerging
Developing
Proficient
1
2
3
4
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Section 6.3
Project-Based Learning and Assessment
The reader may see from this scale that rankings are highly judgmental, requiring respondents to possess their own barometer of group work that may vary considerably from professional to professional. Even though well-trained observers may be able to use such a scale to
their advantage, a rubric takes a Likert scale to the next level by adding depth and dimension
to each of the ratings. Adding behavioral descriptions to the ratings should facilitate greater
understanding and reliability of scoring the same behavior. After determining the range of
quality indicators (usually three to five categories), a rubric developer will then fill in the
narrative details to explain what behaviors exemplify the intersection between criteria and
quality indicator (see Figure 6.7).
Figure 6.7: PBA in action: Rubrics
ሁሁ Rubrics provide a manageable way to assess multiple components of students’ work or
performance.
PBA in Action: Rubrics
Example
Play Skills
Developing (1)
Requires some
scaffolding
Emerging (2)
Independently
performing
skills with little
prompting
Mastery (3)
Independently
performing skills
with no prompting
Enters groups Rarely
of two to three demonstrates
children without prompting
Enters group
with verbal
prompting
Occasionally
enters group
independently
Consistently enters
group when
opportunities arise
Imitates
others during
play
Imitates adults
during turntaking play with
adults
Imitates peers
and adults
occasionally
without
prompting
Frequently imitates
others and prompts
others to imitate self
Not present (0)
Requires high
level of
scaffolding
Rarely
demonstrates
When the rubric is complete, all the cells will be clearly defined. Rubrics provide rich information regarding a child’s development; if the same ones are used over time, these rubrics can
show patterns of progress toward proficiency. To see these patterns of progress, professionals will compare a child’s current performance to his or her past performance, rather than
comparing one child to another.
Using Available Rubrics
Many rubrics have already been developed and are widely available to EC professionals. When
possible, it makes sense to use these rubrics rather than creating new ones, considering that
someone has already completed the hard work of developing and testing the tool. Several
digital sources—such as teacher websites and digital applications—not only provide predeveloped rubrics, but also provide templates and ways to score and store rubrics electronically
(for example, see iRubric).
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Section 6.3
Project-Based Learning and Assessment
On the other hand, since it is challenging to develop a good rubric, many poor ones exist. The
Center for Teaching and Learning (2014) described several characteristics to look for when
evaluating a rubric, including:
1. Are the indicators written clearly and concisely so that children can understand?
2. Do indicators provide sufficient information to guide children’s actions?
3. Is there sufficient range in the indicators to span children’s possible performance
levels?
4. Are the criteria defined in a way that permits scorers to evaluate performance in an
accurate and unbiased way?
5. Are all the criteria equally important?
6. Does the rubric evaluate both how children perform (process) as well as the quality
of the outcome (product)?
When a good rubric cannot be found, teachers must either fall back on their own rubric design
expertise or take an existing rubric and adapt it.
Challenge
Write descriptions for each of the empty cells in this performance rubric.
Group work
Not seen
Emerging
Developing
Proficient
Language use
Not seen
Emerging
Developing
Proficient
Creativity
Not seen
Emerging
Developing
Proficient
(continued)
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Section 6.4
Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
Challenge (continued)
Effort
Not seen
Emerging
Developing
Proficient
Content knowledge
Not seen
Emerging
Developing
Proficient
Meaningful outcome
Not seen
Emerging
Developing
Proficient
Refer to the Appendix for the answers.
6.4 Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
There are a variety of ways that EC professionals can go about collecting PBA in natural settings. The most authentic PBAs will result from the intentional selection of a specific mode
of assessment in order to produce the most accurate assessment of a child’s skills, abilities,
or behaviors. This can be achieved through either teacher-designed or commercial forms of
assessment.
Interactional Assessments
Perhaps the most organic assessment is that which takes place within the context of interactions with children. Interactional assessment is conducted when educators evaluate children while engaging in authentic activities with them. Typical daily activities offer opportunities for interactional assessment. Like all assessment, the process of collecting evidence
of progress is purposeful, both in terms of behaviors that teachers expect to observe and
strategies for collecting data. The interactional approach is particularly useful for assessing
language and communication. Social interactions that may include puppet shows, reading,
and meals are natural opportunities to assess language and other developmental areas.
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Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.4
Although interactions commonly take place between children and between other adults and
children, interactional assessment is specifically structured to take place while an observer is
taking part in the action. To educators, natural benefits of this authentic practice over traditional assessment include immediate feedback, scaffolding as needed, and acting and feeling
credible as a conversation partner. At the same time, children engaged with their teacher or
evaluator benefit from the immediate feedback and the activity’s authentic feel.
The first order of interactional assessment is to determine what knowledge, skills, or behaviors are to be targeted. Once an observer-participant establishes the purpose, a means of
assessing targeted behaviors can be determined, as well as how the data will be used within a
formative assessment framework. Finally, it is equally important that observers allow themselves to be surprised by unexpected behaviors. If the purpose is defined too narrowly or
the assessment technique too structured, observers are likely to overlook behaviors that are
the very point of the assessment. For example, if a teacher is playing with a small group of
children who are building a space station, her intent may be to observe and evaluate their
vocabulary. If the focus is limited to language content alone, however, she may miss children’s
use of pragmatics, imagination, persistence, group problem solving, the isolation of some children, and fine motor development.
Consider the example of a speech therapist named Gina who records anecdotal notes of
3-year-old children’s behaviors during breakfast. While Gina eats with five of the children, she
purposefully attends to how her students’ language is developing. Because Sam is working
on following two-step directions, Gina makes a complex request: “Sam, please pour yourself
some milk and then pass the pitcher to Anand.” Sam passes the milk to Anand, but does not
pour milk for himself.
After making a note of this omission, Gina turns to two of the girls. “Rachel, your auntie said
you went to the fair this weekend. Did you see Clara and her rooster in the Poultry Barn?” This
interactional prompt is intended to facilitate peer-to-peer conversation, and Gina observes the
two girls exchange information about the rooster and then transition to the topic of horses.
Gina records a description of the length of this student-led interaction, their knowledge of
fair-going content, and the extent to which they use pragmatic strategies to communicate
successfully (such as turn taking, listening, staying on topic, asking and answering questions,
and repairing miscommunication). All these observations provide substantive evidence of
the degree to which Gina’s students are moving toward mastery of learning standards.
The interactional assessment approach has a high potential for observer bias due to its subjective nature and the difficulty of being a participant assessor. That is, observers must balance the need to be a true partner in an activity with the need to carefully observe and take
note of a wide range of planned and unplanned behaviors. At the same time, this approach is
also likely to yield the most truthful behavior—that is, behavior that is most representative
of a child’s abilities to perform in the real world. For very young children (infants, toddlers,
and preschoolers), the most natural context is play. For example, an interactional assessment
between a 20-month-old and an ECE professional that involves blocks makes it possible to
see how the child moves, communicates, processes problems, and interacts socially—without
administering a single test item.
To administer interactional assessments accurately, ECE professionals must possess a deep
understanding of the developmental expectations relative to the age of those children they are
assessing. They must also establish and maintain joint attention and be capable of creating
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Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.4
conditions that are likely to elicit a range of behaviors that enable a child to perform at his or
her best. It might also be clear that no single observation is likely to be sufficient to elicit the
breadth and depth of a child’s behavioral capacity.
Today’s teachers interact and appraise students continuously, both with explicit and implicit
intent. Doing this effectively requires sound, research-based, practice-oriented, preservice
training and continuous professional development to help guide meaningful interactional
assessment. Interactional assessment generates richer and more contextually meaningful
information than assessment in which an observer is not a party to activities (Ishihara &
Chiba, 2014). Often, however, preservice teachers do
not receive the necessary training and continued support to perform interactional assessments effectively. Reflection
In addition to not receiving adequate training, ECE pro- What are some adult behaviors that might limit
fessionals do not always have the tools to help them an assessor’s ability to accurately evaluate a child
make meaningful interactional assessments (Moreno & through interactional assessment?
Klute, 2011).
Although interactional assessment may be informal and a part of every educator’s daily routine, formal versions also exist. An example of a formal tool that has been developed specifically to introduce authenticity into interactional assessment for infants and toddlers is
the Learning Through Relating Child Assets Record (LTR-CAR) (Moreno & Klute, 2011). The
first consideration in assessment is the developmental goal; keeping in mind the assessment
indicators from LTR, educators select typical activities such as social play that are likely to
give the child the opportunity to demonstrate the skill(s) being assessed. For example, if the
developmental goal is “delayed imitation of an adult,” the educator might use an activity that
involves turn taking and problem solving. During play, the assessor would look for but not
directly prompt (such as, “How did I make a spider bed?”) spontaneous delayed imitation
(Moreno & Klute, 2011).
It may seem that a standardized tool could not fit the character of a truly authentic interaction. Yet even for older students, a framework for performance and PBA is established in
order to elicit behavior in a meaningful context. In fact, the assessment, teaching–learning,
assessment cycle depends on systematic planning for and reflective assessment of child–
professional interactions (Grisham-Brown, Hallam, & Brookshire, 2006). The LRT is both an
interactional assessment and a play-based assessment. However, not all play-based assessment involves actively engaging with children, as we will see in the following section.
Play-Based Assessment
As discussed throughout this chapter, performance-based assessment is conducted within
natural contexts for learning based on developmentally appropriate practices. Until children reach kindergarten, and even then, best practice suggests that play is the most natural
and effective context for learning many necessary social, emotional, cognitive, language, and
motor skills. Thus, play-based assessment is performance-based assessment, where children’s abilities are evaluated in the natural context of play.
As mentioned in earlier chapters, early childhood educators are increasingly feeling pressure
to replace play-based curricula with academic-based curricula. According to Russo (2012),
ECE professionals are put in a position of having to defend the value of play to administrators
and parents, even as research supports the important connection between play
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Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
Reflection
When might it be best to assess play as an outside
observer? As a partner in play?
Section 6.4
and the nurturing of cognitive, social, and behavioral
development, which do not necessarily evolve from
more structured academic activities (Bergen, 2002). As
a consequence, ECE professionals must be mindful of
the value of 21st-century skills such as risk taking,
social competency, imagination and creativity, and
problem solving that are derived from play.
Professionals can conduct play-based assessments during naturally occurring and child-regulated play, using either teacher-developed or research-based tools. A number of play-based
assessment instruments have been developed, such as Play Assessment Scale, Transdisciplinary Play Assessment-2 (TDPA-2), and Playing in Early Childhood (Kelly-Vance & Ryalls,
2008). However, the potential of these tools to provide meaningful outcome information has
not been realized, since they tend to lack rigorous standards of documentation and scorers
have difficulty achieving interrater agreement, particularly for cognitive behaviors (O’Grady
& Dusing, 2014). For example, TDPA-2 requires one to undergo a 5-day training before becoming a competent administrator. For the time being, educators may be better served by developing their own performance-based measures.
Still, there are compelling reasons to use play as the context for assessment. Play provides a
natural and appealing context in which children can express themselves, which allows children to be comfortable and happy and thus perform their best. Further, play is child initiated
and child maintained. This unscripted behavior reveals a wide range of emotions and relevant
evidence of maturity across domains. Play-based assessment is both a learning and demonstrating medium that allows adults to discover how children approach tasks and the ways
that children learn from their experiences. Consequently, play has the potential to enhance
learning in many different ways. Therefore, it is necessary to link assessment strategies to
the purposes for which assessment is conducted. Play itself may be the target (such as independent, parallel, and reciprocal play), or professionals may be more interested in learning
that takes place through play, such as fine motor skills, problem solving, language use, and
social–emotional development.
Unlike interactional assessment, play-based assessment may or may not feature the observer’s active participation in children’s play. For one example of play-based assessment, suppose Mr. Marco observed his kindergarteners playing a game that they called “Groundies.” By
observing the children’s invented game, Mr. Marco could see that Liza was a strong communicator; she explained the rules to Raymond, who had not played the game before. Mr. Marco
also watched all the children climb, jump, run, and balance on the playground equipment,
demonstrating many maturing gross motor skills. He used his phone to take a quick video of
the children, and later, when reviewing the video, he noticed that Jack and Javier had resolved
a conflict by talking through a misunderstanding without assistance from any of the adults on
the playground.
As with other forms of assessment, play-based assessment (unless using one of the tools mentioned earlier) should be designed by first considering its purpose. What does the observer
hope to learn by observing a child? Next, an observer may select or arrange a typical early
childhood activity that should give the child an opportunity to demonstrate targeted behaviors. Finally, an assessment device or method must be selected or designed.
Kelly-Vance and Ryalls (2008) recommend the following best practices in arranging the environment to facilitate play-based assessment:
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Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.4
1. Play-based assessment may be conducted in any authentic setting, including a home,
child care center, school, and clinic.
2. Toys should be age appropriate. For example, if observing cognitive skills, toys that
enable children to manipulate in different ways, construct, or problem solve should
be made available.
3. The environment should not be chaotic, but also not pristine, as some clutter can
lead to problem-solving opportunities that may not occur in a Spartan setting.
4. Free play may better reveal children’s behavioral competencies than facilitated play;
if the target behavior is not elicited or on display during free play, the observer may
need to intervene and facilitate an opportunity for the child to exhibit the behavior.
5. Play with peers is appropriate if social skills or communication are important to
observe, but it may hinder assessment if an observer is more interested in seeing
the complexity of a child’s cognitive skills.
6. Those conducting play-based assessment require a strong knowledge of child development in order to yield valid observations.
7. A variety of tools may be used to assess children in play, including video recordings,
checklists, rubrics, narration, and so on.
Having established the conditions for assessing children’s competencies during play, an EC
professional may choose to be a part of play or to observe play without participating in it.
This decision will influence the assessment’s outcome, since children play differently when
an adult is present than when playing alone or with other children. While observing children during play, whether facilitated or not, professionals should constantly keep learning
objectives in mind. To remember what to look for, it is helpful to refer to learning outcomes
multiple times a day. In doing so, professionals document what children can and cannot do,
relative to age-based expectations. If a child can perform a skill, planning should facilitate
acquisition of more advanced skills. For example, if a child is playing with other children with
prompting, planning should rest on removing those prompts or shifting prompting to other
children (such as, “Billy, do you see someone who could help you cook breakfast?”). Similarly,
if a child cannot yet perform a skill, the ECE professional may consider continuing instruction
as planned or modifying instruction to provide more modeling, prompting, or feedback.
Routines-Based Assessment
For very young children, performance assessment takes place in the context of daily routines. As routines-based intervention is considered best practice for very young children, so
too is routines-based assessment (McWilliam, 2010). For infants and toddlers, even those
not receiving interventions, routines are activities that occur regularly and naturally during
families’ daily lives. These include dressing, eating, making transitions, playing, and so on.
During these activities, infants and toddlers communicate, solve problems, move, and interact
in their most natural ways. Additionally, individuals who interact with children during these
routines are typically family members. Thus, assessment is conducted relative to parents’
or other consistent caregivers’ satisfaction with children’s behaviors during these routines.
Finally, if assessment indicates a need, intervention is planned as embedded facilitation of
learning within regular daily routines.
An early intervention specialist, Ms. Unrau, made weekly visits to see 14-month-old Kia, a child
born with Williams syndrome, and her parents, Bridget and Michael. Using a routines-based
intervention model, Ms. Unrau explained how Kia’s parents could support her development
while engaging in typical daily activities. This week Ms. Unrau filled out an observational log
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Section 6.4
Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
while watching Michael give Kia a bath and help her complete her range-of-motion exercises.
Ms. Unrau provided a narrative of the type of information Michael could record between home
visits to monitor progress (see Figure 6.8). In this way both parents and early intervention
professionals directly link routines-based intervention to routines-based assessment.
Figure 6.8: Routines-based assessment observation log
ሁሁ Routines-based assessment is primarily used with very young children as they are observed in
their natural routines in order to see developmental progress. This example shows parental data for
Kia, who is working on range of motion during bath time. From the data, it is possible to see that Kia’s
parents are vigilant in following through with range of motion and that there are some movements
that were more difficult. Her parents and early interventionist can use the data to think about ways to
improve Kia’s range of movements.
Kia’s Range of Motion Log
Date
Routine
Bathing
Instructions: While engaging in daily routines, check if Kia completes movement on right (R) and
left (L) side and circle if she completes the movement with full range of motion with or without
assistance parent assistance. Make a note when something happens during the routine that
affects movement (e.g., if she cries during movement, types of objects that motivates independent movement, if she has partial independent movement—but not full range)
Arms
Reach to front
R
X
L
w/assistance
Y
N
X
Comment Kia refused to reach with left arm and resisted assistance.
Raised arm above to her shoulder with assistance.
Reach out to side
R
X
L
X
w/assistance
Y
X
N
R
X
L
X
w/assistance
Y
X
N
R
X
L
X
w/assistance
Y
L
X
w/assistance
Y
Comment
Reach to front
Comment
Trunk
Reaches across midline
Comment
Reaches behind
R
N
X
X
N
Comment Kia was getting tired and did not like the plastic bear we used, so did not reach behind
on right; did attempt to reach behind for bunny on left, but needed assistance for full range.
Hips
Flexes at hip
R
X
L
X
w/assistance
Y
R
X
L
X
w/assistance
Y
R
X
L
w/assistance
Y
Comment
Moves leg away from center
X
N
N
X
Comment
Moves leg past center to cross
X
N
Comment
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Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.4
Before planning an intervention, families are interviewed to determine needs and contexts
for routines-based activities. Interviews may be designed according to the following routinesbased outline, during which an interviewer should take complete notes, putting a star next to
items that seem particularly important to parents:
1. Ask families to identify their main concerns about their child and how these concerns impact family members’ lives.
2. Ask families to review a typical day, explaining regularly occurring events.
3. Highlight areas of concern. For example, “Every time I try to leave the house, Ainsley
cries uncontrollably.”
4. Rate routines. As parents complete their description of each routine, the interviewer
may ask parents to evaluate their satisfaction with that routine.
5. Final questions:
a. What worries you most?
b. If there was one thing you could change about your life, what would it be?
6. Summary: The interviewer summarizes the interview outcomes, putting emphasis
on those routines that were starred.
7. Make choice(s) and sequence priorities. Based on the starred routines from
the interview, parents identify and rank those that are of most concern
(McWilliam, 2010).
This assessment approach leads directly to identifying the learning outcomes that are important to families and can be used to plan intervention. Recommendations, training, and implementation are targeted toward supporting families who wish to improve the flow of daily
routines that will advance the child’s development. Consistent with this family-centered
assessment of child performance is ongoing assessment that is likewise family-centered.
For example, the Vanderbilt Home Visit Script (VHVS) is an interview that focuses on how families believe “things have been going” (McWilliam, 2004, p. 151). The interviewer is advised
to follow evidence-based interviewing strategies that provide emotional support to families.
These include making positive comments about the child, responding to family requests and
indirect expressions of need, focusing on the entire family and not just on the child and/or
primary caregiver(s), treating family members as if they were neighbors rather than “clients,”
and demonstrating empathy by considering issues from the perspective of families (McWilliam, Tocci, & Harbin, 1998). The VHVS has seven general questions, modified below, on which
an interview will expand based on initial assessment and planning:
1. How has it been going?
2. Is there anything you would like to ask me?
3. How has it been going with respect to priority routines? (Ask about each priority
separately.)
4. Is there a time of day that is difficult?
5. How is (each family member) doing?
6. Do you or have you had recent or upcoming appointments?
7. Do you feel you are doing too much or not enough with your child?
During each regular visit with families, professionals repeat these questions so that parents
both feel validated as effective caregivers and can be supported with additional recommendations, training, or referrals to other services. This authentic assessment procedure will be
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Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.4
periodically augmented by more systematic standardized assessment, but as a formative tool,
routines-based assessment provides the primary basis for intervention.
Problem-Based Assessment
Routines-based assessment is grounded in observing children as they go about their typical
routines, and it often solves problems in doing so. Yet there is a form of PBA that is completely structured around children solving problems. Problem-based learning is a process
by which children research, innovate, and resolve a specific problem. Hattie (2009) found that
problem-based learning was a powerful strategy for enhancing higher level cognitive skills
such as critical thinking and creativity. For example, it is recommended that teaching science
and math through inquiry in early childhood is best achieved when paired with problembased questions (Wang, Kinzie, McGuire & Pan, 2010). Fostering scientific thinking through
performance-based activities is the basis for inquiry-based science instruction.
Since real-world problems are seldom discipline specific, it makes sense that performancebased tasks designed to foster scientific understanding would integrate curricular objectives
for other disciplines, such as reading, writing, social skills, and technology. Indeed, an international interest in STEM has filtered to early childhood, and many examples of problem-based
curricula have been designed to promote scientific understanding. These include Pathways to
Science, Scientific Literacy Project, Scratchjr, and Head Start on Science and Communication
Program (Senocak, Samarapungavan, Aksoy, & Tosun, 2013).
Science itself depends on measuring phenomenon, so assessment considerations for student
acquisition of scientific knowledge are a natural partner to learning itself. Assessment may
consist of informal measures such as rubrics, observations, competitions, and presentations,
or gains in critical thinking may also be measured using standardized tools such as the Test of
Critical Thinking (Kim, VanTassel-Baska, Bracken, Feng, & Stambaugh, 2014).
In one example of problem-based assessment, suppose that Ms. Gladwell’s second graders
were learning about composting as part of a science unit on where food comes from. Intrigued
by the idea, the children started to brainstorm ways they might be able to start composting
at their school. After researching a variety of approaches to composting, they decided to start
worm boxes. The second graders held a bake sale and helped host a community rummage
sale to raise money to purchase compost bins and worms. Then members of the class created
posters and visited the other classrooms in the school to explain about the worm boxes. They
started composting in October, and by May they were able to use the compost in the flower
beds around the school. In doing so they cut down on lunchroom waste by 25%.
Ms. Gladwell evaluated this project during and after the work. During the project, she assessed
the process by scoring children on a rubric that included teamwork; number, quality, and
practicality of solutions; planning composting and fund-raising activities as well as executing
those plans; children’s own data collection; and analysis of the success of their composting
project. In addition to process, Ms. Gladwell evaluated the final product, including factors such
as impact, which was calculated by measuring the volume of waste and from interviews with
members of other classrooms where the children presented, as well as school staff; quality of
both oral and written/visual presentation of final results, which was assessed with a rubric;
and the depth of understanding as well as application of the science of composting, which was
assessed by a summative quiz.
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Section 6.4
Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
Mathematics, too, provides a natural context for problem-based learning, because math is
problem solving. Using a problem-based approach to understanding mathematics adds to
children’s interest and elaboration of prior knowledge. It is putting mathematics in motion.
Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers develop early mathematical concepts when they play with
clay, blocks, drawings, and visual schedules to solve problems related to mass, volume, quantity, addition, and time (Charlesworth & Leali, 2012). Again, assessment of these early math
skills will focus on how (the process) children solve problems as well as what (the product)
children conclude. Measuring acquisition of math constructs and learning-outcome mastery
may include observation, rubrics, checklists, permanent products, and verbal explanations.
Challenge
Consider the following problem-based activities.
Pre-K case: Children in a preschool program are provided with a whole group challenge to
match animals to their habitats. The learning objectives of this task include the following:
1. Identify five new North American wild and/or domestic animals in both aquatic and
land environments.
2. Apply basic rules of ecology (for example, legs, fins, wings) to match animals to land,
water, and sky.
3. Create an ecological mural, locating images (from magazines, drawings, photos) of
animals to their respective habitats
4. Explain to other children and adults about the newly learned animals, their habitat(s),
and reasons why particular animals were matched to particular habitats.
Relevant Learning Standard (IL) 4: 21 months to 36 months: Children use their
communication skills to indicate interests in observations, experiences, and engagement
with the world around them.
Children actively experiment with their environment to make new discoveries.
Building a base, EC professionals will introduce early ecological concepts through activities
such as reading stories, relating previous experiences, and watching short videos about
many different animals (some known and some new) who live in the forests, lakes, and
streams, as well as those who fly. During these activities the characteristics that enable
animals to adapt to their environments (such as, wings, fur, legs, fins) will be explained.
Children will act out animal parts, pretending to have the characteristic features relative
to habitats. Finally, children will design, draw, color, and populate earthly environments
with respective animals.
K–3 case: Three first graders are given a problem of identifying solutions for abandoned
pets in the community.
Learning Objective 1: Students will identify the main causes of the problem.
Learning Objective 2: Students will use the team problem-solving process to
brainstorm, evaluate ideas, and develop solutions.
Learning Objective 3: Students will present their final solution to the class using
a chart.
(continued)
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Other Forms of Performance-Based Assessment
Section 6.4
Challenge (continued)
Relevant Common Core Standard (CA) 1.5.1: Students describe the human characteristics
of familiar places and the varied backgrounds of U.S. citizens and residents in those places.
Recognize the ways in which they are all part of the same community, sharing
principles, goals, and traditions despite their varied ancestry; the forms of
diversity in their school and community; and the benefits and challenges of
a diverse population.
After researching the topic, reading stories about abandoned pets, and interviewing
friends and family about abandoned pet experiences, the children are ready for more
real-world research. When asked by the students, the teacher arranges for them to meet
with the director of an animal shelter, a pet control officer, and a philanthropist. Later,
the parent of one of the teammates arranges an afternoon field visit by the group to the
animal shelter. When these activities are completed, the children are ready to make
recommendations to the class for how to reduce the number of abandoned pets.
Based on this case, complete the following:
1. Write three behaviors you might performance assess on the animal–habitat matching
and the abandoned pet project.
2. Think of five different ways the first-grade team members could demonstrate their
knowledge and skills through this project.
3. Think of three ways the preschoolers might demonstrate their understanding of
habitats.
4. How does your assessment approach differ from preschool to early elementary?
Commercial PBA Tools
In addition to the modes of assessment previously discussed—which are often teacher
designed—commercial PBA tools are also available. The two commercial assessments used
most frequently by EC educators are the Work Sampling System (WSS) and the Creative Curriculum/Teaching Strategies Gold (CCTS) (Susman-Stillman et al., 2014). These screening
tools represent the future of early childhood assessment, since both systems offer authentic,
comprehensive, developmentally appropriate, standards-based, and curriculum-referenced
instruments that may be used online. They also allow data to be compiled and reports made
using online portfolio analysis. Some ongoing assessment tools, such as Teaching Strategies
Gold, have reliability certification for teachers to complete when teacher observation is a part
of the assessment process.
Creative Curriculum/Teaching Strategies Gold
The Creative Curriculum/Teaching Strategies Gold is the most frequently implemented commercial assessment system. For example, Creative Curriculum is adopted twice as often in
preschool programs in Florida as the next most frequently used assessment tool (Flanagan &
Greenberg, 2013). This program was designed to be an authentic and standards-based framework for assessing student progress and linking outcomes to curricular activities (Lambert,
Kim, & Burts, 2014). As such, Creative Curriculum fits well and has been adopted as a part of
the Head Start Outcomes Framework.
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Summary and Resources
Designed for children from birth through kindergarten, the assessment uses 38 predictors
of school success to focus educators’ attention on gathering evidence to support mastery.
Teacher observation checkpoints and prompted “opportunity cards” that ask guided questions to support observation and documentation are supplemented with an online portfolio
system, which is linked to an automated report-generating program.
Children’s skills, concepts, and behaviors are observed as they perform daily activities. The
CCTS focuses on nine developmentally appropriate areas, including four developmental
domains (cognition, language, motor, and socioemotional) and five content areas (literacy,
math, social studies, arts, and science/technology) (Lambert, Kim, Taylor, & McGee, 2010).
For example, under the objective “Demonstrates positive approach to learning” are four developmental indicators that range from “Pays attention to sights and sounds” to “Sustains attention to tasks or projects over time (days/weeks), and returns to activities after interruptions.”
Under each of these indicators, which show a progression from “not present” to sophisticated
“mastery,” teachers enter narrative explanations, document files, or video clips that represent
a child’s performance based on daily observations and interactions. An example of a narrative entry would be, “Latreisha returned to work on her storyboard 2 days after she started.”
Many educators download the CCTC app to their phones, whereby they can easily videotape
a child’s performance in an attempt to illustrate mastery of a standard. The video clip can
then be sent directly to the CCTC database, where progress is documented. For example, suppose that during an art project, Jillian is observed holding a marker with her thumb and two
fingers (progress over a previous assessment where she held the marker with her thumb and
four fingers). Jillian’s therapist takes a 5-second video using her smartphone and immediately
sends the video file to the central database.
The Work Sample System
The Work Sample System has been in use for some time and is the second most commonly
used commercial program to assess young children (Susman-Stillman et al., 2014). Like the
Creative Curriculum, WSS is designed for performance assessment to account for progress in
children’s skills, understandings, and behaviors. Assessment is facilitated through checklists,
portfolios, and the generation of meaningful reports. Seven preschool through third-grade
learning domains are assessed in WSS: socioemotional, language/literacy, art, social studies,
mathematics, scientific thinking, and motor. Using a very structured framework, teachers are
guided to make selections and score children’s work using carefully scaffolded judgments
about their performance (Brookhart, 2011). Brookhart (2011) concluded that when teachers
lack the support of this structured scaffolding, they have difficulty reliably assessing portfolios, which can impact later decision making. Since the purpose of formative assessment is to
inform teaching decisions to optimize learning opportunities, it is necessary both to collect
good data and interpret it correctly.
Summary and Resources
Chapter Summary
Performance-based assessment is an authentic way to evaluate children as they go about the
business of learning through real-world activities. Early childhood educators agree that PBA,
or authentic assessment, is a cornerstone best practice. A natural link exists between early
childhood best practices and performance-based assessment, as both are predicated on the
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Summary and Resources
most natural and meaningful constructs of child development. PBA also lends itself to the
most basic of assessment purposes, which is to inform teaching so as to provide children with
rich and purposeful experiences that are suited to their needs. Because PBA is primarily a formative assessment approach, it makes sense that the types of activities that lend themselves
to ongoing assessment are themselves dynamic, continuous, ever changing.
Portfolios constitute a way to collect and analyze artifacts of progress that include various
forms of PBA. Portfolios should be designed with purpose, whereby ECE professionals select,
reject, and reflect on items that represent growth according to standards or objectives identified by the developer. Forms of PBA discussed in this chapter include problem-based assessment, interactional assessment, play-based learning, and commercially designed performance evaluation systems. Perhaps the most common way to score performance using each
of these methods is to use a rubric.
Even though each of these popular methods falls under the authentic assessment umbrella,
research on their validity and reliability is not extensive. In fact, research suggests that due to
the subjective nature of PBA, there is high risk and occurrence of bias in scoring PBAs (Kane &
Mitchell, 2013). Recommendations for improving PBA’s effectiveness include better preparing EC personnel in child development; training providers to collect and analyze data accurately; and intentionally matching assessment strategy with the purpose for which outcome
information will be used.
Posttest
1. Performance-based assessment and principles of developmentally appropriate prac.
tices are compatible because
a. both emphasize learning in natural contexts
b. both rely on the Common Core mandate
c. both place a high value on early academic learning rather than play
d. both came from work conducted by the NAEYC
2. Which of the following is an advantage of performance-based assessment over traditional assessment practices?
a. PBA’s emphasis on formal evaluation results in highly valid outcomes.
b. PBAs are easy to design and interpret.
c. PBAs are authentic, giving children the best opportunity to show their full
capabilities.
d. Parents, paraprofessionals, and professionals require no training to be proficient
in using PBA.
3. Which of the following is a disadvantage of performance-based assessments?
a. They are costly to design and interpret.
b. They are more subject to bias than standardized tests.
c. They are less useful for making instructional decisions for a child than are screening tools.
d. They cannot be aligned with learning objectives.
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Summary and Resources
4. Which of the following is NOT a strategy for increasing the quality of performancebased assessment data?
a. Conduct a statistical item analysis to establish construct validity.
b. Use multiple assessments and assessment procedures.
c. Write the assessment in a way that behavior can be observed rather than
inferred.
d. Have a second evaluator compare outcomes to determine if there is agreement
and evidence of reliability.
5. All of the following are examples of a typical portfolio entry EXCEPT
a. photographs
b. work samples
c. skills checklists
d. evaluations of teachers by administrators
.
6. Which of the following is a principle that should be followed in developing
portfolios?
a. Portfolios should be loosely organized, with few boundaries that would limit
what and when items are added to the collection.
b. Students should be included in designing, selecting, and assessing portfolio
entries for progress.
c. Portfolios should be shared with all relevant team members but are not typically
useful to parents.
d. Teachers should enter all of a child’s work into his or her portfolio.
7. Children’s conceptual knowledge and critical thinking as developed through prob.
lem-based learning should be
a. determined by weekly testing
b. assessed annually through high-stakes testing
c. determined by assessing how children solve problems and evaluating their
solutions
d. decided by assessing the product rather than the process
8. A good rubric
.
a. has a large number of criteria and indicators
b. should have indicators that overlap with at least 50% of adjacent indicators
c. is not difficult to create
d. is aligned to expected learning objectives
9. Play-based assessment
.
a. is conducted during dramatic group play
b. assumes that play is the best early childhood context for learning social, cognitive, language, and motor skills
c. is conducted by contriving play situations to elicit specific developmental
behaviors
d. is associated with play therapy to help children with emotional disabilities
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Summary and Resources
10. Performance-based assessment outcomes are used to make instructional decisions
.
that may include any of the following EXCEPT
a. placing a child in a program or grade relative to the child’s IQ
b. continuing instruction without making any changes
c. changing logistics, such as when instruction is given, how long a child spends on a
task, or how many opportunities are provided for learning
d. changing the goals to be more or less advanced to more closely match a child’s
development
Answers: 1 (a), 2 (c), 3 (b), 4 (a), 5 (d), 6 (b), 7 (c), 8 (d), 9 (b), 10 (a)
Critical-Thinking and Discussion Questions
1. Although PBA is considered a best practice in ECE, it is also easily influenced by bias.
What steps might you take to ensure that the PBA you use is bias free?
2. Of all the ways to document PBA that were discussed in this chapter, which do you
think is the best for documenting play-based assessment? Routines-based assessment? Problem-based assessment? Why?
3. Portfolios can include a wide range of artifacts. What artifacts do you think are most
valuable? Why?
4. How do performance-based assessments differ from observational assessments
(which were discussed in Chapter 4)?
5. Who might you work with to build interobserver reliability of your PBA? How might
you work with them to do so?
Additional Resources
Learn more about creating digital portfolios in order to easily manage students’ work.
http://technologyinearlychildhood.com/2013/06/06/
using-digital-tools-to-create-a-portfolio-for-your-students
This news article, “Assessing Young Children: What’s Old, What’s New, and Where Are We
Headed?,” details how PBA fits into the larger context of assessment in ECE.
http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.
aspx?ArticleID=210
The article “Tool Trend: Using Early Childhood Rubrics” provides an explanation for using
rubrics in ECE as well as examples.
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/teaching-preschool/77875-using-rubrics-inthe-preschool-classroom
This book chapter, titled “Best Practices in Play Assessment and Intervention,” profiles how
play-based assessment can be used to support early intervention.
http://www.nasponline.org/publications/booksproducts/bp5samples/549_
bpv71_33.pdf
This article from Education World, “Project-Based and Problem-Based Learning in Early
Childhood,” provides a clear and easy-to-follow narrative about the ways in which
project-based and problem-based learning are similar and different.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/virtualwkshp/virtualwkshp002.shtml
The Project TaCTICS website provides more “how to” of routines-based assessment.
http://tactics.fsu.edu/modules/modOne.html
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Summary and Resources
You can learn more about analytic and holistic rubrics, as well as a third type of rubric,
through this easy-to-read “Know Your Terms” article.
http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/holistic-analytic-single-point-rubrics
Answers and Rejoinders to Chapter Pretest
1. False. Performance assessments measure active engagement and the outcome of
active engagement in authentic learning experiences. Although worksheets, exams,
and screening tests have their place, they do not capture the process of learning or
the outcome of learning by doing.
2. True. Performance assessment is linked to activities that are themselves authentic
relative to children’s age and developmentally appropriate expectations. Assessment
of growth aligns directly with learning outcomes in natural settings, where children
engage in real-world activities.
3. True. Student growth is subjectively assessed using a variety of authentic tools.
To the extent that learned behavior is described clearly, evaluator bias is removed.
However, evaluators will still make relative judgments about children’s abilities.
These can be influenced by previous experiences with children, which ...
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