Practices and Challenges of Children’s Learning Assessment in Pre-school Centers

Abstract

The purpose this study was to investigate practices and challenges assessing children in pre-school centers. In the study, 66 teachers participated from government and non-government pre-school centers. To collect data, questionnaire, interview and observation guide were used. The quantitative data was analyzed through frequency, percentage, and mean and the qualitative data was analyzed thematically. Findings show that educators hold diverse views and have varying approaches to assessment, using different tools and methods. All participants agree that assessment is important for supporting children’s learning and development.The findings revealed that poor curriculum implementation and instruction, unfair assessment practices such as unhealthy comparison among children, labelling children as failures by emphasizing on norm, using paper-pencil tests, focusing on few domains of children’s development, using the assessment result for promotion, and a possible wrong interpretation of assessment results.  Moreover, poor documentation of learning activities of the children, using few assessment tools throughout the semester and summative assessment approaches, poor parent communication and feedback provision were common problems in the majority of preschool centres. Lack of professional staff, lack of ECCE syllabus, large class size, and lack of knowledge and skill were the major challenges.

Keywords: Assessment Practice; Challenges; Children assessment; Pre-school

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-4-09