Effective Assessment in the Early Years Foundation Stage

Jan Dubiel

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781473968134
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Evaluación y valoración en la educación

"This book is written by one of the leading experts on assessment. It contains the deep knowledge and understanding that comes with knowing a subject inside out; but Jan Dubiel's approach is very practical."
-Professor Tina Bruce CBE, University of Roehampton How we assess our youngest children is a vital part of early years practice. The new edition of Jan Dubiel's bestselling book offers a clear explanation of the role of assessment in the revised Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), and step-by-step guidance for those working with children from birth to five on making and recording observations in practice.Updated throughout the second edition now features:

• A brand new chapter on the History of the Baseline Assessment Policy
• A companion website including access to SAGE journal articles, child observation videos and examples of completed assessments
• Detailed guidance on the new Integrated Health and Education check at age two

This book continues to help students and practitioners develop an evidence-based understanding of assessment and an appreciation of what constitutes effective assessment in early years settings.

1 Introduction – Reclaiming Assessment

This chapter will:

• Explore the nature and existing definitions of the term ‘assessment’
• Identify and challenge mythologies associated with assessment
• Establish a balanced and accurate definition of assessment in Early Years pedagogical theory and practice
• Explore the notion of ‘significance’ and ‘signifiers’ in children’s learning and development
• Clarify key terminology

When we work with children we connect ourselves to the future – through the inspiration, guidance and wisdom that we provide, and through the influence and impact we have on children’s lives, their understanding and their perceptions of themselves and the world around them. Although this is a future that we may not necessarily see, it is one that we help to shape and one that we are ultimately responsible for (Postman 1982). After all, today’s children are tomorrow’s citizens, its leaders, thinkers, policy makers, innovators and entrepreneurs (Katz 2008). The world we will live in many years from now will be the one governed, organised and enriched by the children we have worked with.

This impact, and by association its responsibility, is even more significant when working with children aged birth to 5. Studies such as the Wikart/Perry Preschool study (Schweinhart et al. 2005) and the ongoing Effective Pre-School and Primary Education (EPPE) study (Sylva et al. 2010) demonstrate the critical influence that pre-school provision can have on outcomes and life chances for children well into their adulthood. Equally significant is the growing evidence (Sylva et al. 2010) that the quality of such provision is one of the most powerful and influential variables, and that the outcomes for children – in all aspects of life – can be strongly determined by this. When this is coupled with neurological evidence that identifies this age range as the most significant in the growth and development of the brain (Shore 1997; Whitebread 2012) then the responsibility becomes an even more stark and weighty one. By the time children start formal schooling much of their sense of themselves is already formed, their understanding of the world around them starting to take definite shape. Neurologically, it is believed that up to 85% of their lifetime dendritical and synaptic connections – the physical basis on which learning is created – have already taken place. Far from the traditionalist view that school is the point at which learning starts, what happens then builds directly on what has already taken place (Shore 1997).

The role of the practitioner in every Early Years setting is by its nature a multi-faceted one (Rose and Rogers 2012). Multiple decisions are taken on a second-by-second basis to ensure that the most effective and life-enriching opportunities are available to children and that their learning and development continues to be supported, facilitated and extended. Conscious as practitioners are of the dramatic responsibility they bear, there is a continual awareness of the need to optimise each moment to most effectively enable and empower children as thinkers and learners. Learning is a constant process; neurological connections are continually being formed, adopted, reconfigured and pruned; the brain continually reshapes and ‘sculpts’ its knowledge, understanding and ‘cognitive flexibility’. The practitioner’s role is to shape and guide this learning so that it is useful, meaningful and applicable to the lives of the children they work with, knowing that birth to 5, the period covered by the terminology of ‘Early Years’, is the most rapidly intense and important period of growth.

Working mostly through their ‘informed intuition’, their experiences, wealth of expertise, knowledge and their highly refined, complex skills in translating and converting these into action, practitioners continually adapt their responses, ask questions, make assertions and provide challenge and support to the children they work with. This is how the fragmented tesserae of each interaction, each conversation, each suggestion, provocation and moment of direct teaching culminate in the skilful, well-equipped, inquisitive, confident and creative children that we, as practitioners, proudly usher into the next phase of their learning.

A key aspect of this process and a critical facet of the practitioner’s role is that of assessment.

The purpose of this book is to focus specifically on this aspect by defining and exploring the critical role and purpose of assessment in effective Early Years pedagogy, examining the considerations and challenges that practitioners face in their day-to-day practice. It will combine an analysis of the theoretical and philosophical aspects required to understand it with a practical overview of how this might translate itself into considerations for everyday practice. Finally, it will link directly to the current statutory assessment requirements through the English Early Years Foundation Stage framework and the specifics of the ‘Two Year Old Progress Check’, the EYFS Profile and the ‘Baseline Assessment’

This book has been written for practitioners, headteachers, managers, trainers, policy makers and all those with an interest in ensuring that the experiences and opportunities that children have in the Early Years are the most meaningful and effective that they can be. Throughout the book I use the term ‘successful’ as the key aspiration and outcome for children. It is important to note that this refers to a broad definition of success that may include, but is not exclusively, what might be defined as ‘academic’. Success in the sense that I use it refers to a broad and deep skill and knowledge set that could be referred to as ‘life skills’, and which incorporates aspects of cognitive, creative, emotional, social and personal as well as purely academic notions of success.

Mythologies and misunderstandings

Of all the areas of Early Years practice, it appears that it is the approach to and understanding of assessment that remains the most confused, maligned, misunderstood and misused (Tickell 2011). It is subject to the most extreme and resilient mythology – however ludicrous – and still often appears to operate on the basis of a ‘folklore’ model (Carr 2001) that serves the purpose of expedience and convenience rather than increasing our information base of how children demonstrate their significant knowledge and understanding. This tension is a critical one to resolve, as an effective and sensible approach to assessment is fundamental to meaningful and inclusive practice. It is also crucial to be aware of, and challenge head on, the dangers of over-complicating what is a critical yet intuitive (and sometimes counter-intuitive/‘informed’ intuition) aspect of successful and effective Early Years pedagogy and practice.

So the title of this chapter – ‘Reclaiming Assessment’ – is a deliberately and consciously provocative one, as it seeks to redefine and reconceptualise what the term means and how we perceive it, and this is ultimately what will impact most strongly on practice and provision in Early Years settings. Above all, effective assessment operates as the most potent lever for self-reflection, change and the development of practice (Carr 2001). The understanding of assessment, its perception, and even the use of the word itself are subject to such wilful misunderstanding and misuse that practitioners can be forgiven for succumbing to its all-pervasive negativity and expanse of nefarious, unwieldy and unnecessary baggage.

The following examples are all taken directly from my own experiences as a Local Authority Consultant and Adviser.

Case study 1

A well-resourced Travel Agents Role Play has been set up in the classroom following a visit to a local branch with the theme ‘Journeys’. The children use the area very effectively, taking on the roles of Travel Agent and customer with enthusiasm and authenticity. One child ushers a potential client into the office to discuss the kind of holiday that they would like. ‘Where would you like to visit?’ she asks, ‘How would you like to travel there?’, ‘What food would you like to eat when you are there?’ and so on. On a clipboard she begins to record this information, spelling common words accurately and making phonetically plausible attempts at others such as ‘afrika’ and ‘chps’. She is very skilled at the role, very involved in the activity, and keen to complete the transaction. In the middle of this, the teacher calls her over to the table where she is ‘assessing phonic knowledge’. The child is faced with a drawn picture of an apple tree containing a number of apples. Each apple has a single letter on. The teacher points to each of these and asks her what sound the letter makes. The child, anxious that the customer does not leave, completes this assessment activity as quickly as possible, continually turning round to make sure that the customer remains. When she is finally released to return she has only identified three of the letter sounds correctly.

Case study 2

Whilst we are discussing the development of children in the setting, the practitioner wearily reaches up to a shelf and takes down a large and generously stuffed A3 folder from a number of similar ones alongside it. Inside, a detailed ‘Learning Portfolio’ itemises the child’s achievements through a plethora of notes and photographs. Much of the information is similar and simple – ‘Charlie made a tower out of bricks’, ‘Charlie completed a jigsaw’, ‘Charlie likes being outside’ and so on. During the ensuing discussion the practitioner states that she spends much of her evenings updating the Portfolio for each child with information and photographs from the day. She declares it to be the most time-consuming task, and whenever anything happens in the setting her first thought is ‘how can I record that for the Portfolio?’ When I ask her what happens to all this carefully stored information, she replies that sometimes parents might take it home at the end of the year, but she never looks at the Portfolio once the information has been added. ‘Does the next practitioner or setting look at it?’ I ask, and she laughs – ‘No, they wouldn’t have time to wade through all this information for every single child’.

Case study 3

A practitioner has devised a complex grid, one for each child that lists specific statements of development grouped into self-created developmental bands. The separate statements within these bands are highlighted in different colours to indicate the time of year that they were ‘achieved’ by the child. On an attached document the outcomes from these are summarised into ‘scores of attainment’ that relate to each group of statements, with each highlighted sentence counting as one ‘point’. Calculations have been made in order ascertain the ‘progress’ children are making within a term and across the year. I am told that they need to ‘move up from one band to another every three months’ and that there is an average score that the group should ‘achieve’ at the end of every half term.

Each of these separate examples demonstrates different aspects of the overwhelming mythology and misunderstanding of the process and purpose, and even meaning, of the concept of ‘assessment’ – what it is, what it is for, why and how we need to do it, and the purpose of the information it generates.

The perception, widely held, is often that assessment is a stand-alone, detached activity, required in order to complete formats and records, used for monitoring and calculating children’s ‘measurable progress’, clinically judging and quantifying children in inappropriate ways that ultimately serve the convenience of a formula for numerical data and statisticians rather than the children themselves. Nor does it appear that this information is derived from what practitioners know about children from their day-to-day contact, conversations and observations. When policy, pedagogical and strategic decisions are taken as a result of this, then the information becomes disproportionately important, consequential and influential. If this then becomes the basis of the requirement for accountability, the separation from everyday practice and knowledge becomes a distinct and accepted ‘lacuna’ between the integrity and accuracy of information and its form and status.

It is also often assumed that the process of assessment is synonymous with the manufacture of vast and copious records – post-its, photographs and detailed written observations that provide tangible ‘evidence’ for the judgements and assertions that practitioners then make about children’s learning and development. This process – record keeping and documentation – is terminology often used interchangeably with the term ‘assessment’; in fact it is imperative that practitioners are aware that these are fundamentally different, as we shall explore later.

Additionally, in many quarters and schools of thought, assessment is viewed as the ‘testing’ of children, requiring them to perform to an adult-defined task, to ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ at this task or activity and then be subject to assumptions about their ‘ability’ and even ‘intelligence’ and potential as a result. For example, in one commercially available system, children are presented with a picture and asked to identify objects such as specific musical instruments or named water-based crafts. Their capability to be able to do or not do this contributes to a weighted score that then predicts the expectation for later attainment.

This deficit model that focuses on what children ‘cannot do’ or ‘do not know’ becomes the main driver, and when this is then linked to a set of ‘targets’ or expectations – however benignly intended – then the diverse nature and reality of children’s development become lost in a sea of faceless numbers, charts and percentages that discard the reality of children as learners. Children are very astute and skilled in tuning in to what is important and soon pick up on the messages that these ‘assessments’ carry. There is much evidence to show how an early sense of failure can impact on a child’s self-esteem and self-perception as a learner (Nutbrown and Carter 2012). Dweck (2006) identifies the concept of ‘mindset’ as instrumental in success and achievement and argues that this is strongly affected by the perception that the learner develops of their own ability and potential. There is an understandable reaction to this type of ‘testing’ approach when the focus for such an activity is very young children for whom the spectrum of what would be considered typical development is enormous, and the resulting assumptions – erroneously arrived at – can have such lasting consequences.

It is hardly then a surprise that even the word ‘assessment’ itself has been imbued with a negative connotation that reflects all of these things and appears in a consistently pejorative way in blogs, discussion forums and the letters pages of periodicals. There is often, amongst practitioners, an adverse reaction to the word itself and it is held responsible for detracting from the specifics of everyday practice and compromising and diverting activity away from supporting children.

Therefore, there exists a profound and widespread misunderstanding of what assessment actually is, what processes it entails, and what its purpose is.

Given this misunderstanding and perception of assessment, it is perhaps important to define it in a calm, measured and professional way that enables us to understand its nature, process and purpose fully.

Defining assessment

The definition by Vicky Hutchin (1996: 7), ‘The purpose of the assessment process is to make explicit children’s achievements, cel...