Assessment Behavior Of Teachers In Large Group Science Learning Activities In Kindergartens

Assessment is an indispensable component of curriculum implementation in kindergarten. On the one hand, assessment helps teachers understand children's development consciously so as to organize the subsequent activities more purposely.On the other hand, assessment contributes to help children refine and summarize their learning experiences and enhance their learning motivation and learning interest as well. In kindergarten, large group science learning activities emphasizes on the development of children's scientific inquiry ability and scientific spirit. It requires teachers to extract and summarize the experiences of children so as to promote the development of related abilities and attitudes. Therefore, assessment is of great importance in large group science learning activities in kindergarten. In order to understand teachers' assessment behaviors in large group science activities, the researcher used both convenience and target sampling strategies and invited four teachers (W, X, Y and Z, representing different stages of professional development) in a kindergarten in city N to participate in the study. The researcher conducted non-participatory observations in the four teachers' classroom and interviewed the teachers after large group science activities.This research got the following findings. The common advantages in four teachers' assessment behaviors were a general appearance of recessive assessment and most explicit assessment behaviors were specific. While the common disadvantages were an overwhelm of oral assessment and the assessment of children's learning approaches was often neglect. Miss Z's assessment behaviors focused on the children's learning, most of them were explanatory. The other three teachers'assessment behaviors put too much importance on classroom management, and relatively neglected the children's learning behaviors. In addition, all the assessment behaviors were influenced by the distinguishing features of science subject, the appropriateness of curriculum design and implementation, teachers' understanding of scientific education and its assessment, the stage of teachers' professional development, and teachers' personal styles. Finally, based on the problems of teachers'assessment behaviors, the researcher put forward some feasible advices to expect the teachers to reflect their own assessment behaviors, make according improvement and advancement, and enhance their assessment abilities in science activities.