DEVELOPMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF YOUNG CHILDERN 4

Developmental assessment of Young children 4 (1+3)

Lesson 14:Interpretation of assessment information

Cautionarary

It includes

• Generation of several hypotheses about possible meanings and holding them tentatively. The collected information may have several meanings, depending on what aspect the focus is on
• Interpretations should reflect only what we actually know.
• Children change rapidly.
• The assessment information is only a small sample of what any child can actually do which may or may not reflect child’s total competence.
• Analyze performance as a broader interval with in which a child is functioning: Whatever a child has done or is doing indicates where he is within a larger band or interval that reflects upper or lower limits of his capability at this point in time.

Reasons for this include

1. Error in measurement: Always expect some error in the information obtained. Accurate estimates of children’s abilities are difficult to obtain. Children are quite sensitive to the external influences such as hunger, illness, distractions or problems at home. Adults also may make errors in documenting children’s behavior.


2. Normal variation in development and learning: There are wide variations of what we can be considered normal in development and learning and child development norms and sequences are usually drawn from large number of children and no individual child is expected to fit exactly. Hence published guides usually indicate a range or interval rather than a fixed point for developmental achievement.


3. Nature of developmental process: Children’s development is dynamic and changes from day to day and week to week. What a child cannot do today may do tomorrow especially if given appropriate assistance. Children may regress because of illness, stress or other factors.


4. Influence of amount and nature of assistance: we should always consider the amount and nature of assistance a child receives to establish zone of proximal development. It has two limits.

Lower level: child’s independence performance

High level: the best the child can do with maximum assistance.

The child’s ability to make use of suggestions and prompts gives clues to his thinking process, level of functioning and the range of tasks she is ready to learn.