Rrsrhology in rhr Schools 1980. 1 7 . 210-215

INFORMAL ASSESSMENT TO MODIFY THE ROLE AND IMAGE OF THE SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST

ROMERIA TIDWELL

University of California. Los Angeles

This article explores the issue of upgrading the school psychologist’s image via the use of informal assessment. Presented also are the implications for this type of assessment for instruction, classroom consultation, and parent interaction.

Educators typically view school psychologists as dispensers of formal tests. For ex- ample, if teachers are asked to comment on how school psychologists spend the majority of their time, a likely response would be, “My psychologist spends most of the day testing children recommended for special education classes.” This perception of the school psychologist has been supported by Keogh, Kukic, Becker, McLoughlin, and Kukic (1975), who found in a survey that the bulk of school psychologists’ time is spent in activities directly related to the formal assessment of students. There is little doubt that, as far as teachers are concerned, the school psychologist is the educational es- tablishment’s officially anointed test-giver.

AN IMAGE OF IMPOTENCE Although school psychologists are viewed as test-givers, they are not seen by

classroom teachers as providing the kind of information that is helpful to teachers in their day-to-day instructional struggles. Because school psychologists customarily in- volve themselves in formal assessment activities, the pedagogical contributions psy- chologists make are often considered minimal. In truth, it is not uncommon to discover that the dialogue between school psychologists and classroom teachers is singularly un- productive. In some instances, a real communication gap exists between the two parties (Roberts & Solomon, 1970). One plausible explanation for this situation is that teachers consider the activities that go on in psychologists’ offices as irrelevant to the activities that go on in school classrooms (Gilmore & Chandy, 1973). While psychologists are viewed as individuals who accurately comply with PL 94-142 assessment regulations, these same psychologists are not seen as persons who substantially address the instruc- tional needs of the classroom.

Nontraditional/informal assessment has sometimes been touted by educators as an antidote to school psychologists’ preoccupations with traditional/formal assessment. Too often, however, the reasons given to support this suggestion are cloaked behind a thinly veiled opposition to formal assessment. While arguments against formal assess- ment are usually quite plausible, it is important that informal assessment be viewed as a worthwhile endeavor because of its own intrinsic merits, and not merely as a reaction against formal assessment.

Indeed, the position to be espoused in the following paragraphs is that informal assessment can not only alter the image of school psychologists so that they are perceived as more useful, but it can also actually make them more useful and egective professionals. I n other words, by employing informal assessment procedures and also by

Requests for reprints should be sent to Romeria Tidwell, Dept. of Education, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles. CA 90024.

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advocating their use by teachers, school psychologists can help teachers to understand how instructional decisions can flow directly from appropriate assessment data. Operating from this new image base, school psychologists will become more like pedagogical experts and less like formal test-givers.

FORMAL AND INFORMAL ASSESSMENT DEFINED Before explicating how informal assessment directly addresses itself to the issues

just mentioned, it is first necessary to define the phrases nontraditionallinformal assess- ment and traditionallformal assessment.

Nontraditionallin formal assessment is a procedure that can be undertaken by any educational professional. Its goal is to detect areas of learner weakness and strength; to verify, probe, or discard the conclusions and recommendations based on formal evaluations; to deduce a child’s particular instructional or behavioral needs; and to for- mulate remedial programs ( Hammill & Bartel, 1975). Reliability, validity, or normative data usually are not available with informal assessment procedures.

On the other hand, traditionallformal assessment is defined as: (a) including the use of standardized tests, (b) requiring some degree of training for proper administration, and (c) being undertaken in various settings for the expressed purpose of testing children. Generally, the obtained information is quantitative in nature, and comparisons are made on the basis of normative data. Validity and reliability information, extensive normative data, and explicit standardization procedures also are provided (Hammill & Bartel, 1975).

WHY EMPHASIZE INFORMAL ASSESSMENT? Since it would appear that by using informal assessment procedures we are giving up

all sorts of psychometric niceties, the question becomes, “Why should informal assess- ment be used in lieu of the millions of dollars worth of well-honed formal instruments around?’ There are three relatively distinct reasons why school psychologists who want to promote a bit of image-shifting and role-changing might rely more heavily on infor- mal assessment schemes. Instructional Payofs

Informal assessment procedures possess the potential to yield positive instructional dividends for the school psychologist as well as for the teacher, pupil, and school district. Informal tests can be specifically constructed to facilitate the design of effective classroom sequences. When used, the goal of these tests becomes to determine students’ academic competencies/incompetencies, or to evaluate students’ strengths/weaknesses in different sensory modalities. Informal assessment can be helpful with these kinds of endeavors because they, unlike standardized formal tests, can be tailored to tap the specific dimensions being assessed, and can be structured specifically for a particular problem population or grade level. The result is that the information generated from these informal instruments can ‘prove educationally meaningful for school psychologists and teachers who must make daily instructional decisions for students (Drew, Freston, & Logan, 1972).

Informal assessment schemes also can benefit the pupil and the school district, since by design the tests can be made congruent with the idiosyncratic features of the district in which the tests are used, and of the student populations for whom they are intended. As previously mentioned, because these measurement devices can be fashioned to delineate

212 Psychology in the Schools, April, 1980, Vol. 17, No. 2.

clearly the specific attributes assessed, it is therefore possible to construct them in accord with a particular school district’s curricular emphases, and to select informal techniques that conform with students’ educational peculiarities. A Consultation Orientation

A second reason why school psychologists who wish to improve their images and alter their roles might place more focus on informal assessment relates directly to the ac- countability issue currently facing the profession of school psychology (Fairchild, 1975). If school psychologists are to help ameliorate students’ learning deficits and provide needed psychological services to the many students who need them, school psychologists must serve as classroom consultants. In this role, psychologists can teach classroom teachers: (a) the informal assessment procedures needed to determine a child’s academic difficulties, and (b) the remediation strategies needed to design a child’s individualized academic program.

In employing a consultation model, the major thrust of the school psychologist’s work becomes that of facilitating students’ learning by improving their instruction (Hayes & Claire, 1978). As convincingly expressed by Waters (1973), in order to be more highly regarded as professionals, school psychologists must be perceived as consultants rather than as merely psychometricians. This view is echoed by Sandoval and Lambert (1977), who contend that if psychologists are to assist teachers, it will be by helping them to be more effective in the utilization of their own resources and insights. A perception of school psychologists as helpful professionals can be fostered if school psychologists help teachers assemble and use instructionally relevant assessment devices. Coping with Parental Zeal

The third and final reason in support of school psychologists’ shifting toward infor- mal assessment is that such measurement strategies can be adapted to meet the needs of parents. A commonly heard request from parents is that they be given information regarding their children’s educational strengths and weaknesses, suggestions for over- coming their children’s learning difficulties, and recommendations for improving their children’s overall academic performance (Tidwell & Wetter, 1978). Informal assessment procedures are applicable in the sense that school psychologists can direct parents (or assist teachers to direct parents) to assess informally their own children, and they can then be given guidance regarding appropriate remediation techniques. Hence, as parents and school personnel can work together to enhance the educational program of students, visible ways are offered whereby school psychologists can be of service. Ultimately, this involvement could help bring about significant modifications in school psychologists’ roles and images.

Classroom teachers, of course, will typically rejoice at the prospect of having a school psychologist step helpfully into the middle of the teacher-parent interaction. Teachers will learn that by using highly focused informal assessment devices, psy- chologists can effectively direct parental energy into constructive channels. Such teachers will surely reconsider whether school psychologists are merely professionals fixated at Freud’s test-giving stage.

APPROPRIATE QUALITY STANDARDS While the arguments supporting a shift to informal assessment appear logically

sound, one wonders why educators must still be convinced of informal assessment’s

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merits. Perhaps an answer can be found by examining the issue from an historical perspective.

Teachers have practiced informal assessment since the beginning of teaching-and still do. Let’s assume, for example, that in the classroom Ricky is having trouble “listen- ing to directions.” Behaviorally, this translates into the following: When students are directed to put down their pencils, push in their chairs, walk quietly to the door, and line up in twos, it is always Ricky who is wandering around. To determine the source of his difficulties, the teacher might engage in some sort of informal assessment; e.g., proceed through an inner dialogue designed to determine the etiology of Ricky’s difficulties. For example, an experienced teacher might speculate that Ricky has an auditory perceptual problem. To accept or reject this hypothesis the teacher might ask: “Does Ricky make frequent requests for repetitions?”; “Does Ricky perform well on paper-and-pencil tasks but not on listening tasks?’ The process of soliciting responses to these questions con- stitutes an instance of informal assessment.

While it is important to recognize how frequently informal assessment has been used by teachers over the years, it must also be acknowledged that informal assessment has a somewhat tarnished history. Indeed, formal assessment procedures were originated in part to avoid the widely documented psychometric deficiencies associated with classroom teachers’ informal assessment efforts. Thus, if the dividends of informal assessment are to be realized, school psychologists must make certain that when informal measurement procedures are used, quality psychometric standards are maintained.

By training, school psychologists know that every good measurement device should possess certain characteristics. The two most important of these are reliability and validity. School psychologists may not realize, however, that there are distinctions in the way in which these traditional concepts can be thought about with respect to informal assessment.

To illustrate, let’s examine the concept of measurement consistency as it pertains to Ricky and his auditory perceptual problem. Suppose that each time there is a child who has trouble “listening to directions,” Ricky’s teacher asks the same two questions that were posed concerning Ricky. The teacher is consistent with the measurement procedures for assessing children suspected of having auditory perceptual problems. Such consistency is requisite if teachers hope to get reliable results from their informal assessment; otherwise, unreliable results are almost certain.

Turning to validity, suppose that after employing the two-question informal assess- ment procedure the teacher then sends each student who has trouble “listening to direc- tions” to the school psychologist to be assessed more formally. After these evaluations, the teacher is informed that in almost every case the diagnosis was “auditory perceptual malfunctioning.” One could conclude, therefore, that the teacher’s informal assessment procedures possess a reasonable degree of validity. In other words, the procedure is capable of achieving its aims-to identify children with auditory perceptual problems.

While these examples may appear fairly simple-minded, they are illustrative of the concerns that must be attended to if informal assessment is to survive as a measurement procedure in whose results educators can place confidence. But reliability and validity are not the only characteristics that informal assessment devices should possess. Examples of other features are: (a) ease of administration and economy of scoring, and (b) the absence of cultural/racial bias in content.

The suggestion is not that informal assessment be required to have the same psy- chometric qualities as formal assessment; however, informal assessment procedures

214 Psychology in the Schools, April, 1980, Vol. 17, No. 2.

should be as psychometrically defensible as situational resources permit. Whereas classroom teachers cannot be expected to whip out a score of construct validity coefficients every time they assess informally, they are not at liberty to disregard totally all issues related to the quality of assessment approaches. The school psychologist can play a meaningful role by aiding teachers in selecting practical and reasonable levels of concern about the standards of their informal assessment schemes.

TRANSLATING PSYCHOMETRIC MYSTERIES Teachers need to understand how psychometric concepts such as reliability and

validity can be relevant for the day-to-day informal assessments that take place in the classroom. In general, this will require upgrading the psychometric sophistication of teachers. One strategy would be to have school psychologists reeducate teachers regard- ing the classroom applications of measurement concepts. The major component of this reeducation would oblige the hsychologist to translate psychometric jargon into language that can be easily understood by the classroom teacher. This could be accomplished by in-service training sessions for groups of teachers or in one-to-one teacher/psychologist interactions. Both of these sorts of sessions should be designed to increase teachers’ prac- tical understanding of a nomenclature conceptually viewed by them as too abstract and theoretical.

Reliability, for example, could be recast as a concept that informs teachers of the consistency with which they make in-class decisions about assigning students to par- ticular instructional sequences. Thus, instead of asking teachers to comprehend a difficult-to-understand correlation coefficient, an adroit school psychologist would in- stead explain to teachers how the computation of an easily understood percentage reflects the consistency of such decisions over time.

Some benefits that would result from such interventions as those described above are: (a) The professional image (supportive leadership) of the school psychologist would be enhanced. (b) In practice, the psychologist would act in a more effective and useful manner by relying on practical ways of describing measurement constructs. (c) The in- trinsic merits of informal assessment would be better realized because of the classroom teacher’s increased knowledge base.

OF ROLES AND IMAGES In reprise, the position has been taken here that school psychologists should use in-

formal assessment as a vehicle to alter both their role and image as seen by classroom teachers. Rather than being perceived as those who only dole out formal tests, school psychologists should promote improved informal assessment practices in the classroom. In presenting the utility of informal assessment, its implications for instruction, classroom consultation, and parent interaction were discussed.

Two tangible mechanisms whereby school psychologists can improve classroom teachers’ use of informal assessment were presented: (a) promoting acceptable standards of psychometric quality in such informal instruments, and (b) providing staff develop- ment for teachers that focuses on the demystification of complex psychometric concepts.

A school psychologist who functions as an effective, instructionally relevant professional is apt to be seen as one. If classroom teachers really view the school psy- chologist as an instructionally relevant ally, not an alien, perhaps psychologists will ac- tually be used more frequently in the classroom.

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