Assessing and Guiding Young Children's Development and Learning

This one-of-a kind text offers students the most up-to-date information on alternative, authentic assessment in early childhood classrooms. In its second edition, Assessing and Guiding Young Children's Development and Learning, updates and strengthens areas of particular importance to assessment in early childhood education, such as practical guides for integrating assessment into teaching, numerous organizational aids to use or adapt for the needs of a particular classroom, expanded portfolio section that shows how to use this increasingly popular assessment tool, updated interpretation guides that reflect current understanding of children's thinking and learning, and effects of cultural diversity and socio-cultural context on assessment and interpretation.

Oralie McAfee is professor emerita of early childhood education at Metropolitan State College of Denver. She is the author of books, research papers, articles, curriculum and teacher-training materials, and other publications related to working with young children and their families in the classroom and home, and has presented on these topics throughout the United States. She has done research on assessment practices and needs in Head Start and in selected state-funded prekindergarten programs. She is author (with Deborah J. Leong and Elena Bodrova) of Basics of Assessment: A Primer for Early Childhood Educators (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2004).

Deborah J. Leong is a professor emerita  of psychology at Metropolitan State College of Denver and director of the Tools of the Mind Curriculum Project, a Vygotskian-based early childhood teacher-training program. She is also a research fellow at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) working on a computerized Pre-K state standards database and a database of preschool assessment instruments with Elena Bodrova. She is co-author with Dr. McAfee and Dr. Bodrova of Basics of Assessment (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2004). Dr. Leong is also co-author with Dr. Bodrova of Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education (Merrill/Prentice Hall, 2007) and four educational videos (Davidson Films). She has written many articles on assessment, play, early literacy, and the development of self-regulation in young children.