Tailored Teaching: Emerging Themes from the Literature on Teachers' Use of Ongoing Child Assessment to Individualize Instruction

Tailored Teaching: Emerging Themes from the Literature on Teachers' Use of Ongoing Child Assessment to Individualize Instruction

Published: Aug 30, 2016
Publisher: Dialog, vol. 18, no. 3
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Associated Project

Using Progress Monitoring in Early Childhood Education: Assessing Methods and Developing an Evidence-Based Model

Time frame: 2012-2016

Prepared for:

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation

Authors

Patricia Del Grosso

Emily Snell

Sally Atkins-Burnett

Barbara A. Wasik

Judith Carta

Kimberly Boller

Ongoing child assessment is increasingly viewed as a tool for informing and individualizing instruction in early childhood, yet little is known about how ongoing child assessment is implemented at the classroom or the programmatic level. This literature review focuses on how teachers use ongoing assessment and adjust instructional practices and content to better meet the individual strengths, needs, and interests of young children. We identified four important issues in the literature in ongoing assessment in early childhood: (1) many teachers do not consistently collect ongoing assessment data, nor do they use it for instruction and individualization; (2) barriers to using data include lack of pedagogical content knowledge and knowledge about how to conduct assessments and interpret data; (3) teachers want more training and professional development in this area; and (4) more needs to be known about how to support the successful implementation of ongoing child assessment.

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