Professor Updates Landmark Guide to Assessing Young Children

The fifth edition marks 50 years since the guide was first published

School of Education Professor Stefano Bagnato has co-authored a new edition of LINKing Authentic Assessment and Early Childhood Intervention: Best Practices for Best Outcomes (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2027), a guide that helps teams of professionals and parents evaluate young children with typical and atypical development by observing them in diverse, real-life settings.

Bagnato wrote the book with Marisa Galliano Macy of the University of Wyoming.

The book emerged from a simple problem: Practitioners were evaluating the development of young children the way they would adults—to children’s detriment.

“For years, practitioners in the field had tested the development of kids in the same way they did as adults, in sterile and contrived settings with rigid procedures,” Bagnato said. “We realized that approach was faulty and detrimental because it was ‘developmentally inappropriate’—violating all research in the field about the importance of context, temperament, and relationships.”

He continued: “Little kids don’t wait, share, take turns, answer questions, and follow directions like adults. The most representative way to document the development of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers is to observe them over time, and especially during their play interacting with peers and caregivers.”

The book helped establish authentic assessment, an approach built on observing children in natural settings and modifying the process and methods of assessment for children with disabilities.

“We focus on observational assessment that can be done by evaluating and triangulating information across many sources to get a rich portrait of the child,” Bagnato said. “It’s about a team of professionals working together with parents to plan individual educational programs for children.”

Bagnato underscored why authenticity in assessment is so critical. “Misrepresenting children through mismeasuring them denies children their rights to beneficial expectations and opportunities.”

Built with Voices in the Field

The new edition draws on a large body of professional input and research.

Bagnato and Macy collected “consumer quality ratings” and commentary about specific authentic assessment methods and processes via Zoom calls and online surveys from more than 2,500 national and international colleagues from 18 countries.

The colleagues include professionals from several interrelated disciplines including physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech/language pathology, school and clinical psychology, and early childhood special education. The data collection led to several peer-reviewed research publications with international colleagues.

“This isn’t just our thoughts, it’s the thoughts of many who actually use alternative processes and methods of developmental assessment—not testing,” Bagnato said.

The book’s sections cover the foundations of authentic assessment, exemplary methods and processes, technology supports, national and international validity studies, and consumer validation reviews. More than 40 exemplary authentic assessment methods are provided along with snapshots of 60 more methods rated as acceptable.

The foreword, written by Michael Gamel-McCormick (a former dean of the University of Delaware and former U.S. Senate committee staff member) with Bagnato, supports equity-based accommodations for PreK-12 students and emphasizes equity, diversity, and inclusion based on individual differences. It also highlights the achievements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and of Medicaid funding and strongly advocates for full funding of IDEA by the U.S. Congress.

Teaching the Next Generation

Technology has changed developmental assessment as well. Cell phones and iPads now enable professionals to record and archive children’s behavior and developmental progress across real-life settings, making observations easier and more representative of the child’s true strengths as well as differences.

Bagnato brings the book’s concepts into the classroom at the School of Education, where he teaches in the Master of Science in Applied Developmental Psychology (ADP) program.

The book has been used in his course Assessment of Children’s Development in Real-World Contexts for students in the School of Education’s ADP and clinical exercise physiology programs, as well as the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and the LEND Disabilities Education Center at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh (Departments of Physical Medicine and Pediatrics).

The first two editions were published by Aspen Publishers; later editions have been published by Brookes Publishing.

Now five decades after its first edition, the book continues to shape how professionals understand and support young children.