learner profiler testing tips · the profiler system collects: •screen for academic ability...
TRANSCRIPT
Learner Profiler Testing Tips
What Does the Learner Profiler
Measure?• The assessment measures prior academic experience in
the form of literacy and numeracy tests.
• The Profiler also collects demographic and social data in order to contextualise the
results
Do you need to be a registered professional in order to use the Learner Profiler?
• The LP is an educational assessment system and is not a psychological or occupational skills assessment and
therefore NO Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) registration is required;
• The LP does not assess for personality or intelligence quotient (IQ) and can therefore be used by anyone interested in education matters;
• The LP can be used by professional persons as well as provincial, district and school-based staff.
The Profiler System
Collects:• Screen for academic ability• Identify literacy and numeracy levels and support required
• Screen for learner abilities and hidden (dis)abilities• Collect learner social context and support information• Track learner progress and
plan support programmes
What Makes Profiler so Unique?
• It creates local norms (benchmarks) in real-time;
• It creates national, provincial, district, class, grade and individual performance benchmarks for every test;
• It updates norms every time one or thousands of tests are completed –on a minute by minute basis;
• It provides deep information (data) on every learners literacy and numeracy performance supported by social and demographic data in every report
Local South African
languages
Compares apples to
apples
Offline and online testing
Laptop; TabletCell phone; Desktop
Tell me more about the Learner
Profiler?Screening, Identification, Assessment
& Support Tool
White Paper 6?SIAS 2014 Policy?
Schools that use the Learner Profiler
produce amazing reports and support
programmes for learners
Literacy is Like
a Railway Track
Give Educators the Tools to Help Them Support the
Learner
In a multi-layered and culturally complex society here in South Africa (and Africa), assessing for literacy and numeracy competency and providing social context information is more useful to educators who want to support a learner. Such results is undeniably more reliable for learner support needs than using test matrices that are often based on contentious and questionably normed “intelligence” assessments.
Gerald Williamson – Educationist and Clinical Psychologist
I would advise that we rather assess for literacy and numeracy as indicators of school success and academic ability.
Literacy Track
Numeracy Track
Without Adequate Literacy and Numeracy Skills Very Little of the World of Information Becomes Accessible – Future Academic or
Formal Learning Becomes a No-Go Zone!
The LP:
Assessing the Railway Tracks of Learning
Phonics and other tests
SpellingReading
Sound – letter correspondence
Orthographic skillsSound segmentation
skills
Sound discrimination
Vocabulary
Words Non-wordsWords Non-words
Single Passage
ComprehensionSpeed
Writing
Planning Organisation
Grammar Punctuation
Memory
RWS symptom based tests
Rhyme Alliteration
Coda Syllabification
Handwriting Typing
Visual skills
Accuracy Fluency
Assessing for Support NOT for Exclusion
Important• Educators assess for classroom support
• Regardless of language of learning and teaching (LOLT) – understanding learner proficiency and support needs for the English language is important
• Mother-tongue literacy and numeracy assessment is important to ascertain conceptual needs
Assess Both
Profiler is developing rapidly to
accommodate many learners
Sotho
Afrikaans
English
Tswana
Zulu
Xhosa
If You Can
How Long Does an Assessment with the Learner Profiler Take?
How long is a piece of string?
“But testing takes too long”
If a child is one year behind in their ability, that means 2000 hours behind.
Profiler would need
just 4 hours per
year.
So monitoring and evaluation takes
0.2%.
0.2%.
0.2% of
hours per year
Some children and teens depending on their age would need more or less time when doing an assessment. When assessing for
support, you are trying to find out what the student needs for support, what they know and what they do not know
Profiler Testing Time
Profiler
Lessons
1-4 hours per annum(includes repeat/ progress testing)
LP for Placement Purposes:
Although literacy attainment is difficult to categorise per grade or age – the LP has
collected norms around our test batteries and is able to
provide some guidelines on measurement
benchmarks per grade.
Age benchmarks are more difficult as there are different
ages in a grade in many a South African classroom
What Do I Use The Social Information For?
• This is self-reported by the learner.
• It helps the educator to develop insight into the learner’s day-to-day challenges
• These insights allow for better school, adult, social and home-support
• Batteries such as the bullying information helps us understand exposure to trauma
• Study Skills helps us to know how to train the learner to tackle time, organise themselves and approach content and exams
• How I learn helps educators and counsellors to identify patterns of learning that forms the symptomology of common learning barriers and diagnoses. The PROFILER DOES NOT DIAGNOSE learners!
The PROFILER DOES NOT DIAGNOSE/LABEL learners!
Can the Profiler Assess Adults?• Literacy and numeracy has no age graded norm. An adult
may read similar to an 8 year old child but it does not mean the adult is similar in learning level as a child
• The Profiler has collected the norms of thousands in South Africa and updates its norms on a daily basis. We prefer to reflect literacy scores as a function of your competency, not an age comparison (BOX APPROACH) – DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS ACROSS THE WORLD READ AT DIFFERENT LEVELS. It is better to offer level comparisons. Age comparisons can be demeaning.
• For schools, we offer a grade level average for purposes of placement and support requirements. Students are clustered according to learning needs (ability) and (dis) ability. Lessons can be structured around ability to read for example.
Schools Should Equip Learners……
• You are assessing for support in areas of learning such as literacy and numeracy – no matter what the age
• Use the results to identify where the learner needs support
• It does not matter what type of barrier the learner experiences – the literacy and numeracy results are indicators of the academic success
• Content mastery (subjects) are for most only an indication of how well the learner “memorised” or “rote-learned” the content in most cases unless one has a pedagogical enquiry type curriculum. For the rest exams and testing are mere memory testing exercises
What About LOLT (Language of Learning and Teaching) Assessment?
• The Profiler is also geared to assess in mother-tongue languages such as Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho and Xhosa with more languages being completed in the near future
A South Africa Firsts Web Based LOLT Assessment Tool in Literacy and Numeracy
2017 Release
Talk to Me About Reports
See Separate Support
Doc/Videos
Overview (by location)
Completed at local level
Bands
By location
Itemanalysis
Profiler has many different types of reports
See Separate Support
Doc/Videos
Profiler Has Backend Data Analytics, Norming and Psychometric properties
Only for high level analysis and by special request