Leveraging play for child assessment

Contributing Author: Hannah Simmons

This article was written as part of the team’s preparation for the 2023 Right to Play Conference hosted by the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford. 

Introduction

In keeping with the theme of play, this blog will explore how we can use play as an innovative and effective approach to child assessment. We will explore some of the challenges associated with assessing young children, and consider how these challenges can be overcome when play is part of the assessment experience. We will also cite an example of play-based assessment from the TalkTogether project.

Why is it important to assess children?

To appreciate how play-based assessment can provide valuable insights on children’s learning, we first need to consider what it is we want to use such insights for. That is, why is it important to assess children?

Assessing children’s learning and development serves several purposes. Those purposes differ depending on who, within the education system, is using assessment data. In short, teachers use assessment to monitor students’ learning and adjust lessons according to knowledge gaps or ability levels (Drummond, 1993). Standardised assessments, whereby all children are given the same questions and scored against the same criteria, provide data comparable across schools and countries (Napier, 2014) and may be used to guide government allocation of resources, for example, budget allocation and teacher recruitment.

What are the challenges of assessing young children?

To  generate useful information about children’s learning and development, the assessment itself must accurately capture their knowledge and skills. Typically, an assessment involves an assessor sitting one-on-one with the child in a quiet location for between 10 and 30 minutes.

Illustrator: Josephine Versfeld

The assessor will ask the child a series of questions and note down their responses, or request the child performs specific tasks. For example, a test to assess gross motor skills may ask the child to hop on one leg, or a test to assess number knowledge may require the child to name the number printed on a flash card. 

Assessments administered in this way include: UWEZO Learning Assessment (Twaweza, 2015); International Common Assessment of Numeracy (PAL Network, 2019); ASER (e.g. Vagh, 2009);   the Early Grade Reading Assessment (RTI International, 2016), the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (Save the Children, 2011), and the Measuring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes instrument (Anderson & Sayre, 2016). 

Even when assessments are carefully designed and rigorously piloted to confirm their reliability and validity,  educational and socio-cultural environments can present additional challenges.

First, the experience of a one-to-one assessment goes against learning norms for many children. Children often do not experience one-on-one time with teachers due to large class sizes which can mean individual assessments with an adult assessor feels intimidating. Moreover, children may find it difficult to navigate socio-cultural expectations around child-adult interactions when responding to the question items presented. That is, in contexts where children are discouraged from engaging in conversation with adults and speaking out of turn, it can be difficult for the child to make sense of the assessment protocol: suddenly the child is encouraged to voice their opinions and ideas and is praised for engagement rather than ‘good manners’. An apt example of this comes from Mathew Jukes and colleagues (2018) who investigated Tanzanian parent, teacher and pupil perceptions of different socio-emotional competencies and found ‘Respectful’ and ‘Attentive Listener’ to be the two qualities teachers and parents valued most in students. It’s plausible, then, that one-to-one assessments in a Tanzanian context might prompt a cognitive conflict in students in terms of how they believe they should behave versus what they are being asked to do. 

Second, the test items themselves can contribute to confusion and weaken engagement, resulting in unreliable measures of children’s knowledge or abilities (Nag, 2017). In terms of adaptation, simply translating an assessment to the local language is often insufficient. For example, an expressive language task may ask children to name pictures of a ‘computer’ or ‘pram’ using the local language terms for these objects. However, the test items won’t accurately capture the expressive language abilities of children for whom ‘prams’ and ‘computers’ aren’t commonly seen in the community. Thus, the test not only needs to be in the local language, but needs to also be further contextualised to draw on objects which are as common to local children as ‘computers’ and ‘prams’ were to the children form whom the test was originally designed/standardised.

Weak engagement in assessment can also be associated with the medium of response they elicit from the child. When children’s learning is predominantly teacher-led with an emphasis on call-and-response and rote memorisation, inviting them to manipulate materials or provide narrative responses can feel disconcerting, especially when considering the above factors associated with one-to-one child-adult interaction. When we measure children using items which are not sufficiently contextualized, it becomes difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about their knowledge or abilities. 

Third, the socio-cultural norms associated with assessment can further influence children’s test performance. In contexts where test results are regularly communicated to parents or posted on the wall, or where children are openly ranked according to performance, being assessed can incite anxiety. If children fear giving an incorrect answer may result in punishment from parents or teachers, or social ridicule, they may be hesitant to provide any response on items they are unsure of. This can lead to high ‘no response’ counts. When the purpose of assessment is to understand what children do know, test conditions which foster a fear of being wrong among children obscure our understanding of their true knowledge or ability (Cassady & Johnson, 2002; Putwain, 2008a).

How can play be leveraged for meaningful, engaging assessments?

There are three primary benefits to using play for assessment purposes.

First, in play, children are driven by curiosity and creativity, and not constrained by a fear of ‘getting it wrong’ (Zosh et al., 2017). They engage in trial-and-error approaches, learning from their failures to bring them closer to their play-based goals – whether that is trying several jigsaw puzzle pieces before finding the right one, or figuring out the optimum ratio of water to sand to build a stable sandcastle. Playful situations are, by nature, safe places to make mistakes. With the fear of failure minimised, children are more likely to perform authentically, in turn providing a more accurate representation of what they know or how they would approach a given situation. Moreover, the iteration we observe in play can translate into children feeling confident and comfortable to correct their own mistakes during play-based assessment. This is valuable information, as it demonstrates higher-order processing insofar as the child can rapidly reflect on and evaluate their answer or behaviour, and remedy it if needed (e.g., Chinn, Waggoner, et al., 1993; Katzir et al., 2006).

Second, playful assessment makes test items fun and the experience of being assessed becomes pleasant for the child. From a wellbeing perspective, playful assessment can prevent children from developing a negative association with tests. ‘Test anxiety’ can increase students’ stress levels, negatively impact their self-concept, impede test performance if students experience ‘mind blank’ or, as discussed above, stop children from producing a response for fear of providing an incorrect answer. For example, an enjoyable activity can reduce the intimidation of a novel one-to-one session with a teacher or researcher. This is particularly important for young children who may not understand expectations around how they should approach assessment items and may feel less comfortable asking an assessor for clarification.

Finally, playful experiences are engaging for children.

In play, we see children focused and absorbed in their activity (Zosh et al., 2017). Given assessment seeks to ascertain a child’s level of knowledge or skill, a task in which children are intrinsically motivated to engage is more likely to reveal their true abilities than one which feels uninteresting or laborious. Indeed, test boredom is something assessors must look out for and try to avoid (James, Griffin & Dodds, 2009). 

Despite the advantages mentioned, researchers must be mindful of how they incorporate play into assessment, and it is advisable to consider several factors: First, respondents’ age should inform the type of activity - what is engaging and enjoyable to younger children can feel boring to an older age group. Second, the assessment activity should be designed to generate meaningful data aligned with the purpose of the assessment. That is, a playful activity like dancing could be fun for children, but not helpful in painting an accurate picture of their oral language abilities. Third, as with any assessment, consideration should be given to the skillset needed for assessors, and the training time needed to achieve high quality interactions.     Also important to consider is the time taken to complete the activity. In short, while a playful atmosphere should be a cornerstone of all assessment, a large-scale standardised assessment is less likely to be able to incorporate rich playful approaches. However, there is no reason why rich playful approaches cannot be included in small-scale assessments.

An example of TalkTogether’s play-based approach to assessment

TalkTogether’s A Story A Day study used a playful approach to solicit narrative story retelling from children aged 5 and 6 years. The study aimed to investigate whether reading stories to children, followed by asking them questions on features of the story would lead children to produce more coherent and cohesive stories. As a first step, we were interested to examine how children changed in their telling of macro-structure elements of the story (e.g., plot; problem-attempt-resolution; characters’ feelings).

Children’s retelling of stories was solicited by means of a monkey puppet, named Maathu Maathu. 

The puppet was introduced to the children at the beginning of the session, and children were told that Maathu Maathu was likely to fall asleep during the story and might need their help to recall what happened. In contrast to a researcher directly asking a child to recall what happened in a story, the playful presence of Maathu Maathu not only disguised the assessment, but made it an enjoyable, engaging and authentic task: children weren’t retelling a narrative because they were asked to, they were doing it because they liked Maathu Maathu and Maathu Maathu needed their help. Children were not self-conscious about their narratives, but motivated to explain the story as best they could for Maathu Maathu’s sake. At the same time, their friendship with the puppet and the fact that he had comically fallen asleep meant the atmosphere for the task was warm and enjoyable. 

Conclusion

Play-based assessment offers important advantages, particularly when assessing the knowledge, understanding and skills of young children. Most notably, this approach allows assessment to be an enjoyable, engaging and meaningful experience. Nevertheless, play should not be regarded as an ‘add-on’ to assessment, and careful consideration should be given to what type of playful approach is appropriate for the given context and purpose of the study. 

About the Author 

Hannah Simmons is a Researcher Affiliate in the TalkTogether project with research interests in socio-emotional, language and literacy development in the Global South. With expertise in African Studies and Swahili, as well as Child Development and Education, Hannah’s work has included research and development of edutainment content, design and management of education projects for bilateral donor agencies, and consultation on education initiatives with a focus on East Africa. Recently, Hannah worked as Impacts Research Officer for TalkTogether. Hannah is currently Tanzania Co-Country Lead for the EdTech Hub – a global research partnership which supports governments in LMICs to generate and apply evidence to strengthen education systems.

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