In order to compare the practices of child assessment in English and Korean preschool, reception and nursery classes maintained by the LEA, a stand-alone nursery school maintained by the LEA, LEA day nurseries, independent day nurseries, a combined ch ...
In order to compare the practices of child assessment in English and Korean preschool, reception and nursery classes maintained by the LEA, a stand-alone nursery school maintained by the LEA, LEA day nurseries, independent day nurseries, a combined children centre, and a work-place childcare centre were selected as English settings. Publicly-funded and independent kindergartens, publicly-funded and independent childcare centres, and a work-place childcare centre were sampled as Korean settings.
Twelve semi-structured questions were developed by the researcher based on the preliminary investigation and related literature as follows: Purposes and uses, attitudes, problems/requests, supports from LEA, inspection, types of assessment, targets, content, specific method, context, participants, judgment. The major documents from government such as SFEYFS, PGEYFS, and EYFSPH were collected. For information about child assessment practices in preschools and perceptions of practitioners, interviews with practitioners were conducted by the researcher successively in both countries and examples of child assessment in the settings were collected at the time of interviews.
The overall assessment framework in England is similar across all types of settings because the government sets out the specific regulations and guidelines for procedure and method of child assessment, and the criteria used in child assessment come from the national curriculum; the early learning goals and their prerequisite steps which is called ‘development matters’. In the meanwhile, there is no unified framework, tools, or recording forms across settings due to no specific regulations by the government or LEA in Korea. The child assessment in English settings are monitored and supported by the LEA through its advisors’ visiting the preschool settings. They also organize group discussions for moderation of EYFS Profile judgment to ensure the consistent assessments across the settings. While in Korea, monitoring and supports for the implementation of child assessment from local educational authorities is weak. Most practitioners in both countries perceived that child assessment is useful for identifying children’s development or achievement even though they have to do lots of work. However, some practitioners argued that it is too much work to write observation, to collect data, to fit them into profile, to make judgment and write comments. They concerned that too much time for child assessment might result in too little time for being with children.