SDCA Journal of Education

Abstract

Reading is one of the most frequently measured abilities (Smith, 2004). Yet it is only fairly recently that an empirically grounded set of Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing was established by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing NCTE/IRA Joint Task Force on Assessment. The Standards, which are aimed to guide the assessment of teaching and learning of literacy on the 21st century, emphasized the crucial role of teachers in the preparation and conduct of literacy assessment as well as the strategic use of assessment results. There is therefore a need to investigate the reading / literacy assessment practices of teachers. In this study, such concern is explored by surveying the assessment practices of Kindergarten to Grade 3 teachers in a Teacher Education Institution (TEI) Laboratory School and in a Non-laboratory School. The study sought to determine 1) how frequently the reading / literacy teachers assess their students; 2) how frequently they assess each of the fourteen domains of literacy; 3) what are the different types of literacy assessments that the teachers use and how often they use them in the classroom; 4) at what level of schooling they assess particular literacy domains; and 5) how they use the assessment results. The results show that the Kindergarten through Grade 3 teachers in the Lab and Non-lab School 1) assess students’ reading skills at a daily basis; 2) assess similar reading / literacy domains with comparable frequency and at similar levels of schooling, and 3) use the assessment results primarily for reporting purposes. On the other hand, they differ in that the Laboratory School emphasized the assessment of higher levels of reading comprehension starting from the Kindergarten level and use such innovative assessment procedures as portfolio and anecdotal records more frequently compared to the teachers in the Non-laboratory School. Such findings are discussed within the context of the NCTE-IRA Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing, with a caveat that these standards should also be examined in light of local contexts and practices.

Keywords: Reading; Reading assessment practices; Kindergarten; Grade 3; Teachers.