Game-Based Assessment of School Readiness Domains of 3-8-year-old-children: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Precise assessment of school readiness is critical because it has practical and theoretical implications for children’s school and life success. However, school readiness assessment mainly relies on teacher reports and a few direct evaluations requiring a trained examiner. Studies indicate that 80% of games and apps target preschool children and education, suggesting that apps are familiar and fun for this age group. Previous reviews have focused on these apps’ training capability but not on their assessment of school readiness. This Scoping review examines 31 studies published from 2011-2019. The Evidence Centred Design (ECD) framework was used to evaluate game-based assessment (GBA) suitability to assess school readiness domains. Results show that it is possible to assess school readiness using GBA. Most studies assessed cognitive domains in school settings and adopted an external assessment of the tasks. However, most studies only evaluated one competency, and few intervention strategies targeted the enhancement of school readiness. Besides, few studies followed the ECD framework strictly. Implications include expanding the assessment to other school readiness domains with a real-time inbuilt assessment that conforms to the ECD framework. GBA provides a new approach to assess school readiness outside or inside the school settings in this online era.

A Systematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Primary School Readiness for Transition Through Play-Based Pedagogies

“…This step involved establishing the eligibility criteria. For inclusion and exclusion, the researchers adopted a similar procedure by Amukune, et al (2022) by setting the inclusion and exclusion criteria as follows:…”

“…This domain is divided into two: subject-specific and general cognitive skills. The subject-specific cognitive domain is usually supported by teaching and learning through a particular curriculum (Amukune, 2022), while the general cognitive skills are not necessarily taught in a classroom situation, but they are essential in problem-solving (Suleiman et al, 2016). The subject-specific cognitive skills featured in the studies were science (n=2), reading (n=1), letter and number recognition (n = 2), counting (n=1), English (n =1).…”

“…Physical well-being and motor development featured in five studies that assessed both fine motor and gross motor skills. Amukune et al, (2022) emphasised the importance of this domain in early childhood because it facilitates children's writing and manipulative play (such as constructing puzzles) during teaching and learning. Four studies assessed literacy and language development.…”

“…Embedded assessment was featured in three studies Pyle and DeLuca, (2017); Pyle et al, (2020); Amukune et al, (2022) and was found to be used to assess both developmental and academic learning during play. In embedded assessment, the assessment event is directed by both the teacher and the learner, and it occurs while the child is engaged in play (Pyle et al, 2020).…”

Development and Application of FOCUS App for Assessment of Approaches to Learning in 3–8-Year-Old Children in Kenya: A Design-Based Research Approach

“…Next, construction entails the creation of prototypes that exemplify these design ideas. This phase is similar to the sixth step of the planning process of "operationalizing the theoretical predictions" (Fischer & Poortinga, 2018, p. 704), To inform the design and construction, we carried out a scoping review of literature of similar apps used in the assessment of school readiness domain (Amukune et al, 2022). For assessment of mastery motivation and executive functions as components of ATL, we only found one app-the FOCUS app, which was initially designed for Hungarian and American cultures (Józsa et al, 2017).…”