One area of assessment that I thought both Anastasi (1992)
and Drummond & Jones (2010) addressed in this week’s reading was that of
environmental assessment. To this end, perhaps
the most profound statement that I felt Anastasi (1992) made was that “test
scores tell us how well individuals
perform at the time of testing, not why
they perform as they do” (p. 612). There
are many reasons why an individual might perform a certain way on the given
testing day. In order to understand
these reasons, we may need to consider factors such as the person’s learning
history, developmental environment, or the person’s response to conditions and
events encountered. All of these factors
would fall under the category of antecedent context.
Whenever I see or hear the word “antecedent” I automatically
associate it with Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which I have studied in a
couple of other classes recently. In ABA,
an observer might analyze a student’s behavior according to the A-B-C model, in
which “A” stands for antecedent, “B” stands for Behavior, and “C” stands for
consequence. When determining the
antecedent, the observer wants to figure out what is triggering the student’s
behavior. I remember hearing about a
student whose disruptive behaviors were triggered when their teacher came close
to the student to work one-on-one. The
student was disturbed by the teacher’s coffee breath! Imagine: an intervention could be as simple
as having the teacher brush their teeth after drinking coffee! Often, teachers jump to doling out
consequences after a student displays disruptive behavior; however, one thing
that one of my professors noted is that many disruptive behaviors can be
avoided simply by antecedent control. Posting
classroom expectations is one form of antecedent control. Other forms of antecedent control might
include seating arrangements, noise control, or temperature control.
In order to determine
which antecedents a teacher may need to control, an environmental assessment
might be performed. “Environmental
assessment involves appraising specific environmental factors that interact
with and predict behavior” (Drummond & Jones, 2010, p. 319). During an environmental assessment, one might
consider components such as physical space, organization and supervision of
space, materials, peer environment, organization and scheduling, safety, and
responsiveness (Drummond & Jones, 2010). I think that environmental assessment
dovetails nicely into Responsiveness to
Intervention (RTI). As Drummond and
Jones (2010) note, schools are now encouraged to use a combination of
research-based instruction, intervention, and assessment procedures for
determining whether students have specific learning disorders (SLDs). As I see it, the RTI approach is to rule out
all other factors that may be contributing to a student’s difficulty in
learning before jumping into assessment and diagnosis for a SLD. An environmental assessment is something that
I believe would be most useful with students falling in the Tier 2/Intervention
category, as the goal in this category is to identify what specific skills or
types of instruction students may need.
Determining that a student’s learning style is not a good fit with their
teacher’s teaching style (environment) could be a key component to helping a
student succeed.
Overall, I found that Anastasi and Drummond and Jones all emphasized
the fact that a student’s diagnosis or placement should not solely depend on
one test score, that there are many factors that one must consider in
interpretation of scores, and that it is very important for school counselors
to be well-versed in types of assessments and the skills to interpret them.
References
Anastasi, A.
(1992). What counselors should know about the use and interpretation of
psychological tests. Journal of
Counseling & Development, 70, 610-615.
Drummond, R.J.
& Jones, K. (2010). Assessment
procedures for counselors and helping professionals ( 7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
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