Assessing and Guiding Young Children's Development and Learning

This comprehensive guide to assessment in early childhood continues to provide the most current research, best thinking, and practical guidance to integrate assessment with effective teaching.

Assessing and Guiding Young Children’s Development and Learning is the only book that shows assessment as a process teachers can use to improve teaching and ensure student learning.  It incorporates current trends in assessment with examples and approaches being used in early childhood classrooms.

The book includes guides for interpreting and using assessment information once it has been collected.  The assessment strategies presented are compatible with all approaches to educating young children.  The social, cultural, legal, and ethical context of assessment and its implications for teachers and teaching are realistically presented.

This comprehensive guide to assessment in early childhood continues to provide the most current research, best thinking, and practical guidance to integrate assessment with effective teaching.

Assessing and Guiding Young Children’s Development and Learning is the only book that portrays assessment as a process teachers can use to improve teaching and ensure student learning.  It incorporates current trends in assessment with examples and approaches being used in early childhood classrooms. The assessment strategies presented are compatible with all approaches to educating young children.  The social, cultural, legal, and ethical context of assessment and its implications for teachers and teaching are realistically presented.

Throughout this fourth edition, text and references have been updated to reflect current practices in assessment, such as increased mandated assessment, increased emphasis on early literacy and mathematical learning, and an increasingly diverse population of children.

What’s new in the fourth edition?

• Chapter 2 has been updated to reflect the new legislation on IDEA (IDEA 2004). No Child Left Behind is included, with discussion of its impact on early childhood teachers and classrooms.   This edition includes more discussion of state legislation.
• Sections on the teacher's role in screening and in environmental assessments (such as the ECERS) have been added. 
• Examples from commercial instruments, such as the COR, WSS, and Creative Curriculum have been incorporated. The section on compiling information uses examples from commercial materials, in addition to showing teachers how to create their own.
• Discussion of and use of "alignment" has been added throughout.