Teachers' judgments of students' early literacy skills measured by the Early Literacy Skills Assessment: Comparisons of teachers with and without assessment administration experience

Abstract

Teacher judgments about students' academic abilities are important for several reasons, including their day‐to‐day instructional decision making. Not surprisingly, previous studies have investigated the accuracy of teachers' judgments about their students' reading abilities. Previous research, however, has not investigated teachers' judgments about students' early literacy skills, nor has previous research systematically examined how teachers' training and use of an objective assessment instrument impact their judgments of students' performance on that instrument. This exploratory study offers the first investigation of teachers' judgment accuracy of pre‐kindergarten students' early literacy skills, and compares the judgment accuracy of teachers with and without opportunities to administer the Early Literacy Skills Assessment (ELSA). Findings suggest that teachers with opportunities to administer the ELSA had a significantly higher percentage of accurate judgments across half of the ELSA subtests, but their judgment accuracy was still no better than 50%–60% on all but one ELSA subtest. Implications for school psychologist practitioners and researchers are presented. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Influences on Teachers’ Judgment Accuracy of Reading Abilities on Second and Third Grade Students: A Multilevel Analysis

“…Hurwitz et al (2007) have already revealed that accuracy grows when teachers are familiar with the tests. Hence, training teachers in administering standardized assessment instruments supports the level of accuracy teachers achieve (Begeny & Buchanan, 2010;Graney, 2008).…”

“…Hoge and Coladarci (1989) have argued already that teachers differ in their diagnostic competences. Begeny and Buchanan (2010) suggested that teachers who had received training on the test used in their study, showed higher accuracy in their judgments than their colleagues without training. In line with this, Herppich, Wittwer, Nückles, and Renkl (2013) found out that teacher tutors judged their tutees more accurately than student tutors.…”

The influence of data on teachers' judgments of students' early reading and math skills

“…Previous research has also shown that when teachers lack preparation, or the most recent training in reading terminology, they may misidentify students who are at risk for difficulties or who already have difficulties (Begeny & Buchanan, 2010;Fedora, 2015;Meisinger et al, 2009). This has implications for the methodology of future studies in this area.…”

Linking Early Childhood Teachers' Characteristics to their Perceptions of Students' Abilities and Responsiveness to Online Professional Development

“…It may also be possible to train teachers to become more objective assessors; scholars have found that training teachers in giving direct assessments of student skills improves their accuracy when estimating their students' performance (Begeny & Buchanan, 2010), and their ability to administer a battery of direct and indirect assessments as intended by measure developers .…”

“…However, despite knowledge of the problems associated with teachers' inaccurate perceptions of students' abilities, teacher ratings are being used to assess student achievement nationwide (Kim, Lambert, & Burts, 2013), leaving questions about what factors influence teachers' perceptions of students, particularly in early childhood mathematics, where there is no available research in this area. Once research is available on the factors that influence teachers' perception of students, it may be possible to train teachers to become more objective assessors by engaging them in professional development (Begeny & Buchanan, 2010;.…”