Study Guide Questions

1. Discuss the rationale for using performance assessment methods.
   
   
2. How do underlying theoretical perspectives and assumptions influence performance assessment methods and procedures?
   
   
3. What are four salient characteristics of performance assessment?
   
   
4. Describe and provide examples of each of the five types of documentation used in comprehensive performance-based assessment.
   

Answer Key

1. Real-life skills are often complex and holistic and cannot be broken down into behavioral components. Performance samples allow practitioners to record highly complex behaviors — visual, musical, or kinesthetic — using a variety of methods and tasks that approximate the conditions and resources the child usually encounters in the classroom or other real-life settings. It also provides information on children’s strategies and processes, and it is conducive to involving families.
   
   
   
2. The social-constructivist approach emphasizes the socially and culturally situated nature of mental activity. Children actively contribute to their own development and learn within a social context of culturally defined meanings and activities.
   
   The ecological approach suggests that children’s behaviors are best observed when they engage in ongoing daily activities and routines. It takes into account the holistic, complex nature of children’s behaviors and the importance of interpreting them within the appropriate social and cultural contexts. It stresses the interconnections among the diverse environments in which a child participates (e.g., home, school).
   
   
   
3. a. Children are given the opportunity to demonstrate and apply their knowledge.
   
   b. It uses a broad variety of methods and products.
   
   c. It allows recording of highly complex behaviors that are visual, musical, or kinesthetic.
   
   d. It provides information on children’s strategies and processes and, therefore, captures qualitative metacognitive and motivational processes.
   
   e. It allows for accommodations and adaptations when assessing children who use assistive technology or augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems.
   
   f. It is conducive to involving families, as it is easier to document what children do in real-life settings such as the home.
   
   g. Other answers may be acceptable.
   
   
   
4. Project narratives focus on "telling the story" of a learning experience. Examples: development of a project through the use of visual displays, stories for and by children, teacher journals, narratives for parents in the form of books and letters.
   
   Observations of child development focus on documenting children’s progress on specific skills. Examples: checklists, anecdotal notes.
   
   Individual portfolios involve the systematic collection of the child’s work. Examples: drawings, writing samples, maps, videotapes of conversations and activities, photographs of block constructions.
   
   Products include work that children may have created together in a group. Examples: a large poster or book, sculptures and construction, videotaping of musical activities and movement, recordings of group discussions and conversations.
   
   Child self-reflections are statements children make that reflect their own knowledge and feelings. Examples: any logical example is acceptable.