PowerPoint to accompany my workshop for the @beyondlevels conference in Sheffield on 21.5.2016

1. Dr Julian Grenier
grenier@outlook.com
@juliangrenier
Assessment in
the early years:
chore or
celebration of
children’s
learning?

2. A first challenge
• In this discussion I am talking about how EYFS
Development Matters is being used, and not
saying this is how it was intended to be used.
• Huge amounts of assessment information are
being collected using the framework in many
schools.

3. How much assessment?
• There are about 570 bullet-point
statements in Development Matters

4. • With the common practice of breaking
down each band into beginning,
developing, secure, stages:
• In a nursery class where children’s levels
of development range from 16-26, 22-36,
30-50 months - there are 9 levels across
17 aspects = 153 levels to assess.
• And some schools still require “evidence”
for each assessment….

5. • There are 141
children aged 3
and 4 years old on
roll at Sheringham
Nursery School.
• There are 18
aspects in
Development
Matters
• That adds up to 18
x 141 = 2538 cells
of data and looks
like…

7. But…
• What we have been able to do effectively
with that information is pick up on children
who are at risk of making poor progress.

8. But…
• We have focused professional dialogue
about those children, link more with their
parents and develop more planning and
provision for them.
• This works – and we don’t want to lose
that.

9. A second challenge
• “Doing
observations”
can be
experienced as
a time-
consuming
demand by
many staff
working with
young children.

10. Chores
• Jayne Osgood quotes Delia, one of the
practitioners in her study, discussing the
“stress of report writing, record keeping
and all those other chores”. Osgood
comments that “Delia’s reference to “other
chores” is indicative of the perceived
laboriousness of current expectations in
nursery practice.”
• Osgood, Negotiating Professionalism
(2012, p.127)

11. A third
challenge

12. • Sometimes so much time is spent
photographing children and taking notes
on iPads etc. that opportunities for
extended interaction, play and teaching
are lost.
• This distorts pedagogy away from
interaction.
• Does the device re-frame the way we see
children? Is that helpful?

13. A fourth challenge
• The workload
involved is potentially
huge.
• Either that ruins
teachers’ lives, or
they find themselves
collecting the
information but not
having enough time
to analyse or use it.

14. A fifth challenge
• Practitioners are encouraged to think this
is all about “tracking” or “reporting” … and
not about learning

16. And a final challening thought…
• Do we really want to find ourselves talking
to parents about children’s learning in
terms of ages?
• How might it feel as a parent of a four-
year-old to be told that your child’s
development is like a two-year-old’s (e.g.
“in the 22-36 month band”)?

17. EPPE Project on assessment
• The EPPE Project
found that the most
effective settings used
formative assessment.
• The researchers
noticed two common
practices which
appeared to be
ineffective.

18. Ineffective assessment and
feedback
• Non-specific praise e.g. “good boy”. Dweck
and others have argued that this sort of
feedback, which ignores process and effort,
can lead children to choose unchallenging
tasks in order to gain more praise – fixed vs.
growth mindsets

19. Ineffective assessment and
feedback
• Throwing children back on
their resources e.g. a child
comes up with a partially
completed inset jigsaw and
the practitioner says “why
don’t you try again?”
• If the child had the
resources to complete what
she or he wanted to do,
they would have done it…

20. 2012 review of the
EYFS
• Are we making much
progress on this key
recommendation?

21. What Ofsted say about early
years assessment

22. Working collaboratively with a
range of schools
Two Teaching School
Alliances working with
a large group of
maintained nursery
schools in East
London have come
together for critical
reflection and joint
practice development.

23. Early findings and thoughts
• Often assessments end just at the starting
point where something exciting is being
proposed, theorised, or experimented on
by a child.

24. Early findings and thoughts
We would like to have
less of the discourse
of ‘tracking’, more of
the discourse of
celebrating learning,
and thinking about
how it might be
extended further.

25. Early findings and thoughts
• We want to
prioritise
children’s
thinking “in
action” over
descriptions of
activity or
merely trying to
achieve
“coverage”.

26. We want to think carefully about
• accuracy – accurate assessment will lead to
richer dialogue, better support at transition,
and better planning for learning
• effectiveness – as we develop our
assessment practices, do we see improving
quality of teaching? Improving outcomes? If
we don’t, is this working?

27. Early findings and thoughts
• Some of the New Zealand
practices, including Learning
Stories and the concept of
“keen observation”, have
helped to develop our
thinking.
• Dalli et al. (2009) “keen observation” in Quality
early childhood education for under-two- year-
olds: What should it look like? A literature
review
• Carr and Lee (2012) Learning Stories

28. Can you help?
• We are very keen to receive more
feedback, challenges and ideas to help
this process
• @juliangrenier or grenier@outlook.com