Currently, the concern for success in writing and reading leads to an increase of time spent on teacher directed instruction and on testing in kindergarten (Bassok, Latham & Rorem, 2016; Carlsson-Paige, 2015). Although... [ view full abstract ]
Currently, the concern for success in writing and reading leads to an increase of time spent on teacher directed instruction and on testing in kindergarten (Bassok, Latham & Rorem, 2016; Carlsson-Paige, 2015). Although assessment is essential to support children’s development (Enz & Morrow, 2009), testing, on the other hand, is intended to make diagnoses and tends to measure static abilities (Bodrova & Leong, 2012). Furthermore, testing creates anxiety (Linder, 2008; Pellegrini, 1998) and, often, test results are not reliable (Enz & Morrow, 2009; Pellegrini, 1998). These statements have led us to search for alternative assessment practices that would be more appropriate to assess emerging literacy skills of kindergarten children. Per Pellegrini (1998) and Hancock (2008), observing children during their play, when they are interacting together, is a fruitful approach to assess emerging literacy skills. In literature, few empirical studies document preschool teacher assessment practices (Bédard, 2010; Pyle & DeLuca, 2013; Zerbato-Poudou, 2007) and none, to the best of our knowledge, focus on assessment practices of emerging literacy integrated into symbolic play in preschool classes. Therefore, we conduct a case study research to describe these assessment practices as currently applied by two preschool teachers chosen by a purposive sampling. Three sources of evidence (Yin, 2009) were used to collect data on these cases: interviews, direct observations, and documentation. The results of this case study will be presented and discussed at this conference.
