Authentic vs. Standardized Assessment
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CONTENT WARNING: I would like to mention that I am not a medical doctor, psychologist, or therapist and I am sharing this content for educational purposes only. Social media should never be used as a substitute for mental nor medical health care. If you suspect that your child is experiencing any developmental concerns, it is okay to get help, and I highly recommend seeking help from a medical doctor, psychologist, therapist, and/or other professional who is qualified to do so.
When I was taking my Observing and Recording Behaviors of Young Children course at Bucks County Community College, I had to write a research paper about assessing young children. The prompt was to discuss the pros and cons of authentic assessments and standardized assessments, what each of these techniques add to the assessment of children and my conclusion to the uses of these two types of assessments in the evaluation of children and how the course influenced my ideas about assessment. Since the information in this essay can be very beneficial to students of all abilities who require assessments especially in their Early Childhood Education, their families, and observers in the education or psychology field and since certain types of assessment are used for children with disabilities/disabled children/differently-abled children, I thought that this research paper would be beneficial to upload as a blog post.
Young children are assessed for many reasons. Along with there being multiple purposes for assessments, there are also many types of assessments. Two of the main types of assessments are authentic assessment and standardized assessment. Authentic assessments are a more hands-on type of assessment where "student performance on worthy intellectual tasks are directly examined" (Donges 2019). Standardized assessments are written or computerized tests with "multiple-choice or true-false questions" (Donges 2019). There are many pros and cons of both of these assessments.
There are many advantages as well as disadvantages about authentic assessment. In today's world, young children learn better through more hands-on lesson activities such as motor play, games, arts and crafts, or observing objects. The pros of authentic assessment are that it can "improve teaching and learning" and "views learning as a process" (Donges 2019). Authentic assessments improve teaching and learning because they allow the students to actively perform tasks according to their developmental areas such as cutting along dotted lines on paper as part of their fine motor skills. These developmental activities can also be planned according to the students' learning styles and interests. For example, if the child likes making art that involves basic shapes and one of the assessments is based on how well they can cut things out from paper, the teacher can make the child cut out basic shapes. Assigning tasks according to the children's interests and development make assessing easier for the teacher because they know their students so well that they know what topics to teach about when observing them. "It helps teachers by encouraging them to reflect on the relevance of what they teach and provides results that are useful for improving instruction" (Donges 2019). However, there are also some cons about authentic assessment. Even though teachers may know their students' interests, they may sometimes have difficulty finding lesson resources according to the topics of their interests no matter how much they look for them. Teaching only topics according to their interests can also be a problem because learning about things not according to their interests is needed too in order to perform certain life skills. For example, if the child does not like math because they struggle in this subject area, they may still struggle with it even if the teacher arranges the lesson according to their interests such as counting blocks if they like blocks; even if the teacher picked objects that the student likes for them to count, that does not mean that they will not struggle with this subject or that their struggle with definitely reduce because it does not make the subject any different, but they have to learn it because counting is a life skill. Incorporating students' interests into lessons is a great way to try to increase their engagement to get through the lesson though. Another major con about this assessment method is "difficulty in ensuring test validity and reliability given the subjective nature of human scoring rubrics as compared to computers scoring multiple-choice test items" (Donges 2019). Human scoring rubrics are assessment tools that are opinion-based off of the observers meaning that the observer comes up with whatever they think that the assessment should be like whereas computers scoring multiple-choice test items have specific ratings to choose from. The problem with human scoring rubrics is that the observer's opinion of what the assessment should look like could be wrong because they are not authorized to create the assessment tool. There may also be controversial opinions about both of these types of assessment tools though because when using computers scoring multiple-choice test items, the observer could choose the wrong ratings making their observations appear as biased.
In regards to standardized assessments, one of the pros of this assessment method is that "they are easily administered and scored using objective criteria", "have multiple-choice or true-false questions", and "provide fair, valid, and reliable assessments that produce meaningful results" (Donges 2019). This means that the ratings made on this assessment tool are based off of facts according to the development of children. The answer choices are according to real developmental skills that children are expected to do and the observer did not make the answer choices. However, a con of this type of assessment could be that the observer could choose the wrong rating choice resulting in the child's parent/guardian or others involved in the child's development disagreeing with the observer. In addition, some people could dislike the ratings listed on this assessment and think that there should be different answer choices based on other skills in that developmental area.
Everyone has different opinions about all types of assessments. Some people prefer authentic assessments over standardized assessments or the other way around. From this information about assessments, I see pros and cons about both types of assessments. I think that it is great that authentic assessments are performed through observing children performing hands-on developmental tasks instead of taking tests since tests do not benefit much. Seeing how well children do performing tasks is better than taking tests because it is more about if they can physically do it than remembering things about it. However, I do not like the part of this assessment where the observer comes up with what the assessment results should like instead of referring to answer choices. Answer choices are based off of facts and assessments should only be based off of facts and never opinion-based. Through my experience with assessing children, children could be assigned to perform hands-on tasks still including ones according to their interests in order for standardized assessments to be conducted about them too. For example, if one of the answer choices on a standardized assessment questionnaire asks is about if the child can cut things out from paper and the child likes basic shapes, this part of the assessment could still be conducted. Another example is if another answer choice asks if the child can name their body parts, the teacher could ask the child to point to certain body parts and name them. My only concern about standardized assessments is that families could disagree with the answer choices that the observer selected. For example, if the observer picks a choice that basically somehow explains that the child does not express their emotions appropriately such as by hurting classmates, the child's parent/guardian(s) could refuse to believe that their child does this. As an educator, I will always do my best to help children succeed in their development and education through assessments.
You might also like and gain a better understanding of assessments, psychology, and child development by reading:
- Observation Reflection-Value of Observation Techniques
- I Have Mixed Emotions About Standardized Tests
- Are Standardized Tests Really Helping Students?
- Building Young Children's Development Through Play and Conversation
- Multiple Intelligences Theory
- Infant/Toddler Teachers Need to be Valued More as Teachers
1. "What Are the Advantages of Authentic Assessment Over Standardized Testing?". Seattlepi.com. (2019). https://education.seattlepi.com/advantages-authentic-assessment-over-standardized-testing-2893.html
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