Alternative Perspectives in Assessing Children’s Language and Literacy

One of the realities of educational practice in the late 20th century is the increasing role of assessment, especially of children’s oral and written language. While there are many issues and problems surrounding this assessment, one problem that needs to be addressed is the lack of alternative ways of assessing children’s language and literacy for K-12 practitioners. There are many ways to approach the assessment of language and literacy. How one approaches the assessment of oral and written language depends, in large part, on how language is defined and on what purposes language is viewed as serving. In this book, alternative ways of assessing language are based on three different perspectives defining language and its uses: anthropological, socio-psycholinguistic, and literary. Although applying these perspectives to language is not new, only recently have educators and others taken seriously the need for assessment of language to be consistent with the perspectives of language underlying classroom instruction. Simply put, as language education (including reading, writing, and oral language) becomes increasingly based upon anthropological, socio-psycholinguistic, and literary principles, the assessment of language and literacy must also be based upon such principles. This book discusses and illustrates how to reconceptualize assessment in terms of the alternative perspectives outlined here.