ABSTRACT

We report on our analysis of talk during an assessment task where we asked children living in northern Canadian communities to draw and write about activities they share with family and friends in their daily lives. We introduce a language as context approach to assessing young children’s (ages 4–6 years) literacy and sociocultural knowledge, defining context as understandings of the demands of creating texts through drawing and writing, the genre of classroom assessment, and the values and worldviews of their local community and family. From our inductive analysis of children’s (n = 64) talk during the assessment tasks in the fall and spring of one school year (n = 128), we conceptualise relationships between children’s oral language strategies and their understandings of the conventions of an adult-initiated, one-on-one classroom assessment, their strategies for carrying out the task, and of social meanings in everyday experiences with family and friends in their northern communities. We argue this form of assessment provides a comprehensive picture of children’s meaning-making that encompasses social and cultural practices of a diversity of contexts, including school and community.

摘要

我们在一项评估任务中报告了我们对谈话的分析，我们要求生活在加拿大北部社区的儿童画并写下他们在日常生活中与家人和朋友分享的活动。我们引入一种语言作为情境方法来评估幼儿（4-6 岁）的识字和社会文化知识，将情境定义为对通过绘画和写作创造文本的需求、课堂评估的类型以及价值观和世界观的理解。他们当地的社区和家庭。 从我们对一学年秋季和春季评估任务中儿童（n = 64）谈话的归纳分析 = 128），我们将儿童的口语策略与他们对成人发起的一对一课堂评估的惯例、他们执行任务的策略以及与家庭和家庭的日常经历中的社会意义的理解之间的关系概念化。北方社区的朋友。我们认为这种评估形式提供了儿童意义建构的全面图景，包括学校和社区在内的各种背景下的社会和文化实践。