Supporting Developmentally, Culturally, and Linguistically Informed Practice in Early Care and Education with a Balanced Early Learning Assessment System

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

This research translates scores from a large-scale early learning and kindergarten entry assessment into more educationally relevant information that may support decision making about effective instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse populations of young children. The Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP) is an observational assessment of early childhood development used at scale for formative assessment and summative assessment in multiple U.S. states. The DRDP was designed to facilitate coherence between assessment scores and early learning standards using methods that include construct modeling and a learning progression perspective (Wilson, 2005). The poster first describes a psychometric method for translating growth curve results into more instructionally relevant information about children’s developmental milestones in subdomains of early language and literacy (e.g., expressive language, receptive language, emergent literacy, etc.) operationalized in terms of children’s observable skills, capacities, and behaviors. Second, an empirical example shows variation in children’s developmental trajectories from early infancy through kindergarten for children classified as dual language learners (DLLs) who speak different home languages. The results reveal notable cross linguistic similarities—and some differences—in learning and development with implications for (a) a basic understanding of the rate and sequence of children’s developmental milestones and (b) developmentally, culturally, and linguistically responsive instruction. The results may be viewed as an efficient and psychometrically accurate source of information to support decision making about effective instruction for DLLs, applicable at the classroom, program, and policy levels. Issues regarding assessment validity and barriers to formative assessment with culturally and linguistically diverse populations will be discussed.

Author

• Joshua Sussman, University of California - Berkeley