Early childhood assessment: observation,teacher ‘knowledge’ and the production of attainment data in early years settings

Since 2003 children in England have been formally assessed at the age of 5 after their first year in school, and their numerical scores reported to parents and analysed at school and national levels. The use of statutory assessment for this age group is unique in the UK, where other regions use less formal methods of assessment. It is also unusual internationally. This paper examines the peculiarity of this assessment system, the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile, using data from two ethnographic case studies of classrooms of four- and five-year-old children in London. The study revealed tensions between the construction of teachers' knowledge, their ambivalence in relation to the numerical data they report, and the use of the data for school accountability purposes. Alternative methods of assessing this age group in other parts of the UK are used to consider the implications of the production of numerical assessment data in early childhood education.     

Datafied at four: the role of data in the ‘schoolification’ of early childhood education in England

ABSTRACT

This paper examines processes of datafication in early childhood education (ECE) settings for children from birth-five years in England and how this relates to increased formalisation. Unusually, ECE in England includes a standardised curriculum and formative and statutory assessments; thus it has been described as subject to both datafication and ‘schoolification’, a term used to describe the adoption of school-like practices and values in ECE. Using interview data from ECE settings over the last decade and a theoretical framework drawing on Foucault and Deleuze, the paper sets out the ways in which settings in schools and nurseries are subject to the demands of data, and how this produces data-driven subjectivities for both teacher and child. These developments are then linked to aspects of ‘schoolification’ including more formal teaching, a focus on literacy and mathematics, and use of ‘ability’ grouping.     

The impact of an elaborated assessee’s role in peer assessment

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an elaborated assessee’s role on metacognitive awareness, performance and attitude in peer assessment. Two intact groups (a total of 82 students) were randomly assigned to a treatment condition (having back‐feedback activity) or a control condition (not having back‐feedback activity). The results indicated that, regarding metacognitive awareness, when participants played the elaborated assessee role, they tended to report higher metacognitive awareness in their learning process. Regarding performance, when participants played the elaborated assessee role, they tended to receive better scores in making a concept map. Regarding attitude, when participants played the elaborated assessee role, they reported greater motivation towards the peer assessment. The findings of this study suggest instructional implications for those who want to employ peer assessment as a learning method by showing the effectiveness of a well‐developed role design, specifically one that includes the back‐feedback activity.     

Opportunities for development: the practice of supervision in early years’ provision in England

This article examines how the practice of supervision has developed within a range of early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision in a county in Central England in the United Kingdom. Supervision has been recently introduced as a mandatory requirement for ECEC in England in 2012, and there is limited research looking at the impact of this. The research aimed to examine how supervision is being implemented by ECEC providers. It employed a mixed methods research design including a questionnaire (n?=?38) and three subsequent telephone interviews, and draws out key themes on who is accessing supervision, the level of frequency, the purposes, challenges and enablers of supervision. It highlights the tendency of the managerial function of supervision including safeguarding of children to dominate, and the potential for supervision as a reflective space and as support for staff including managers and leaders to be overlooked.     

Performing the ‘Knights of Change’: male youth narratives and practices of citizenship in Jordanian schools

Through educational campaigns and partnerships with the international community, the Jordanian government has indicated a desire to create a more loyal, democratic, and self-enterprising citizenry. While the participation of girls in public life is encouraged by the Jordanian regime and valorised by the international community, little effort is made to ensure and understand the participation of boys in such spaces, and what this participation produces. By highlighting the experiences and narratives of boys, including those of Palestinian origin, in two government secondary schools in Amman, this article examines how top-down efforts to produce a particular national identity have engendered a performative kind of citizenship in schools, in which students interrogate official accounts of Jordanian-ness through various practices of signification. This use of performativity, adapted from Judith Butler's work on gender, raises two important points: first, the learning of citizenship and national identity is a contingent and self-reflexive process; second, practices of citizenship cannot be understood outside the sociopolitical norms that regulate them.     

Flight turbulence: the stormy professional trajectory of trainee early years’ teachers in England

This paper documents trainees’ ‘flight turbulence’ as they negotiate the complexities that lie between ‘the self’ and the securing of Early Years Teaching Status in England. Early Years Teachers, besides teaching, are expected to lead improvements to the quality of provision. However, drawing on interview data, an impasse is discerned where ideas meet instrumental policy in practice. Trainees are often unable to reshape the meeting of theory, policy and practice, and struggle in finding teaching approaches which they are comfortable with ethically. Drawing on Holland et al.’s concept of ‘figured worlds’, it is suggested that the development of theory-informed practice should not be seen as a solitary task for the student but as a dialogic though difficult conversation involving the student, university staff and placement practitioners. Dialogism is seen as requiring persistence but as offering opportunities for beginning early years’ teachers, with support from teacher educators and experienced practitioners, to negotiate the challenging spaces between policy, theory and beliefs as they seek to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct ethical professional identities for themselves.     

Variation in teachers’ conceptions of alternative assessment in Singapore primary schools

Alternative assessment is an increasingly common and popular discourse in education. The potential value and benefit of alternative assessment practices are premised on significant changes in assessment practices. Many alternative assessment practices seek and promise alternatives to tests and examinations. However, labelling a practice as ‘Alternative Assessment’ in itself is not a guarantee of meaningful departure from existing practice. Such alternative assessment practices risk retaining and perpetuating the same limitations and adverse consequences of tests and examinations they claim to avoid. Recent developments in the assessment system in Singapore have given rise to increased attention to alternative assessment as a means of alleviating negative effects of testing and high stakes examinations. The success or limitations of these attempts are helpful in understanding how alternative assessment can be understood and used in different ways, and how each way of experiencing alternative assessment may be more suited to supporting learning than others. In this article, the results of a phenomenographic study on teachers’ experiences of alternative assessment in Singapore are presented. Three conceptions of alternative assessment are identified, each depicting a particular way of understanding and using alternative assessment in schools. These findings are subsequently examined in terms of the potential for teachers to understand and use alternative assessment to enhance students learning in sustainable ways.     

Assessing learning in the early years’ outdoor classroom: examining challenges in practice

The benefit the outdoor environment has for young children’s development is widely documented. However, there is less literature outlining practitioners’ experiences of assessing learning in the outdoors and factors which impact the level and quality of assessments undertaken. This study, based on a pragmatic mixed methods approach, undertaken in 9 early years’ settings in North Wales, reports the findings of 37 practitioners. The research suggests that assessing children in the outdoors is not used to its potential. Factors impeding the use of the outdoor classroom include: lack of appropriate resources; level of staff expertise; child-staff ratio; adverse weather; and changes to curriculum policy which place emphasis on the formal assessment of children. There appears to be assumptions about learners most likely to benefit from outdoor learning and assessment: boys; children in socio-economically deprived areas; and children with additional learning needs. The paper highlights the need for broader training opportunities for practitioners on planning for learning and assessment in the outdoors that go beyond a single course focus. With creative planning, there is no reason why summative assessments of all areas of learning within the early years’ curriculum cannot be done as effectively outdoors as they may be being done indoors.     

Khanya College Johannesburg: ten years of ‘education for liberation’: an assessment

Khanya College, a small tertiary access programme in Johannesburg, South Africa began operation in 1986. Making use of Freirian methodology and targeting activists involved in the anti‐apartheid struggle, the college has made a serious attempt to embody the notion of education for liberation. However, the college has faced serious constraints due to the conservative nature of the education system within which Khanya was forced to operate. Despite these constraints the college has succeeded in producing a number of politically active professionals as well as developing working relationships with mass organizations in the country. With the advent of democratic rule in South Africa in 1994, the college has been forced to evaluate its strategic orientation. The conclusion of Khanya has been to try to develop into a larger scale, comprehensive community college which still adheres to the ethos and methodology which inspired Khanya's founding.     

Elementary education and the practices of literacy in Catholic girls’ schools in early modern Germany

Girls’ schools in the early modern era were largely run by nuns and can therefore be distinguished as Catholic institutions of learning. These schools flourished in the Catholic parts of Europe since the turn of the seventeenth century. Despite their focus on religious education, elementary skills such as reading, writing and sometimes arithmetic were taught as well. Based on curricula, didactical methods and the texts used in class, the article analyses the practices of literacy in Catholic girls’ schools in seventeenth and eighteenth century Germany. As the intentions of school founders and teachers reveal, the acquisition of literacy by the female population was not an end in itself. It rather served the denominational, gender- and class-specific socialisation of the girls. Nevertheless, learning to read and write enabled the girls to participate in the literate culture of their times. The impact of schooling on female literacy can be measured by correlating literacy rates and data on school attendance. Compared to coeducational schools where girls often only learned to read, whereas the boys were also taught writing, girls’ schools proved to be the better alternative.     

Education policy and the ‘ideal learner’: producing recognisable learner-subjects through early years assessment

This article examines how education policy, in the form of a statutory assessment system used in the first year of primary schools, defines the ‘ideal learner’. This ideal model is important because it prescribes the characteristics and skills a child needs to display in order to be recognisable as a learner. An analysis of the content of the assessment itself is used alongside ethnographic data from classrooms where the assessment is conducted, to demonstrate how the values inherent in the assessment and its associated practices reflect neoliberal discourses. Rational choice, self-promotion and individual responsibility for learning are all valued within this framework, and children’s transitions into recognisable student-subjects are dependent on their adoption of these values. It is argued in conclusion that this restrictive notion of what a ‘good learner’ looks like can work to systematically exclude some children from positions of success.     

Teachers’ role in curriculum design in Portuguese schools

Teachers’ role in curriculum design is a broad question that inspires political educational reforms among European countries, a trend that even extends to higher education politics. The perspective on teachers’ role in curriculum, both at the level of the policies and of the practices, shapes recent educational reforms in Portugal. These are the concerns underlying our research that intends to substantiate school teachers’ involvement in curriculum development as it is experienced by them, and while comparing their views to the roles they are attributed in the political and academic dominant discourses. To reach teachers’ perceptions, we distributed questionnaires which were completed by 214 teachers in primary and secondary schools. We could conclude that the enactment of a professional identity on the basis of teacher assumption of their role as real curriculum designers is still far from being achieved.     

Reframing ‘well-being’ in schools: the potential of recognition

In Australia and internationally, the well-being of children and young people is a core focus of social policy, with a growing imperative to locate well-being within the sphere of education. However, the term ‘well-being’ remains ambiguous and the implementation of educational approaches to promote and improve it appears fragmented and ad hoc. In Australia, little is known about how well-being is understood and supported in schools, particularly from the perspective of students themselves. This article reports on key findings from an ambitious mixed-methods study funded by the Australian Research Council that investigated conceptualisations and practices around well-being in schools. Underpinned by theoretical interests linked to Childhood Studies and recognition theory, the research investigated policy, student and staff perspectives on well-being. The findings point to the key role of relationships, providing considerable scope for analysing the salience of Honneth’s modes of recognition for well-being in schools.     

Can an early mathematical intervention boost the progress of children in kindergarten? A field experiment

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to be associated with children’s arithmetic knowledge as early as kindergarten, which is an important...     

Global Crisis: Local reality?: An international analysis of ‘crisis’ in the early years

Abstract

In a recent keynote speech Paul Standish noted ‘there is agreement in judgments. But how the response to those judgments is realised is always cultural’ (paper presented to PESA Conference, Taiwan, 2012, p. 2). Making judgments about what constitutes ‘crisis’ for children is not necessarily agreed universally, though clearly there are some commonalities across many countries, as evident in United Nations on the Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCROC) agreements. This article examines the local rhetoric and reality of ‘crisis’ for children in countries across the world. What constitutes a crisis for children, and how this plays out in the contexts of nine countries is explored by the authors based on the insights of each countries’ (OMEP) (www.omep.org.gu.se) Chapter representatives. Policies will be juxtaposed with provision based on the experiences of OMEP members reporting from their various contexts. Taken together they provide a contextualised perspective on ‘crisis’ and its relationship to a non-absolutist foundation to children’s rights. The article concludes that what constitutes crisis from a global perspective warrants consideration in the context of local reality—in this locale the concept of every child as having access to ‘rights’ is far from realisation.     

Adolescents’ emerging habitus: the role of early parental expectations and practices

This study makes two contributions to the literature. First, it bridges the sociological discussion of social class habitus with psychological notions of adolescents’ educational expectations, locus of control, and self-concepts. Second, it empirically examines the relationships between early employed parental practices and expectations and adolescents’ dispositions using a recently available wave of data from a nationally representative sample of US students. The findings reveal that students from higher socioeconomic status families had more positive general and area-specific self-concepts, higher educational expectations, higher internal locus of control, and higher academic achievement, and higher parental educational expectations were positively associated with all studied outcomes. The findings provide only partial support for the effects of early parental practices and highlight the role of gender and race/ethnicity in shaping adolescents’ habitus.     

The role of social capital in students’ perceptions of progress in higher education

This paper aims to analyse the effects of students’ social relationships at university on students’ success. Specifically, whether a student with heterogeneous relationships obtains better academic results than a student whose relationships are mostly with classmates. Further, the research examines whether students’ social relationships make up for their parents’ lack of human capital. A survey was answered by a sample of 867 students from universities in the metropolitan region of Barcelona. The findings suggest that the effects of social relationships are not always positive. The benefits of social networks at university interact with the type of degree studied, the student’s dedication to studies, and the student’s social class. Perceptions of progress for each category of students is different: It is more positive for those with frequent heterogeneous relations, who do not work or do so for a few hours, and for those who are enrolled in “hard” science courses.     

Early years practitioners’ knowledge of early signs of autism in England

This research explores early years practitioners’ knowledge and ability to recognise the signs of autism and provide appropriate support. It was carried out using semi-structured interviews with six UK-based early years practitioners who have worked with children with autism. The findings highlighted that early years practitioners are aware of autism but have a limited understanding of the early signs of the condition. Furthermore, there are inconsistencies in training and collaboration in early years settings. All these factors influence whether the practitioners are able to recognise the early signs of autism and provide appropriate support. This study highlights the need to address the issue of training provided to early years practitioners.