Teacher Assessments and Literacy Profiles of Primary School Children in South Africa

This paper reports on a study in which teacher assessments were a central part of a methodology for collecting literacy profiles of primary aged children in South Africa. The main focus of the study was to ascertain whether teachers could collect evidence of, and record, significant achievements in the literacy development of primary aged children. The study set out to address a number of important questions. First, whether the Profiles of Learning framework could be used to profile the literacy development of primary aged children in South Africa, and second, whether teachers could engage with the demands of performance assessment, specifically in developing portfolios and keeping records of achievement.