Qualitative observation and standardized reading tests

Summary The 1987 Education Reform Bill, and its associated reports, have sharpened the debate on the relative merits of quantitative and qualitative assessment. This paper describes a recent survey, carried out as part of a reading test development project, which explored reading teachers’ perception of the importance of a number of qualitative categories of behaviour displayed by children undertaking an oral reading test. The results indicate that many specialist teachers are disposed, in principle, to take account of a wide range of such behaviours and are aware of factors that might qualify a normative test result. It is suggested, however, that there needs to be considerable further discussion on exactly what, in the field of reading, needs to be observed and assessed, on how conflicting qualitative and quantitative assessments might be handled and on how a large body of possible observations might be made manageable, both for use by the assessing teacher and for a subsequent public presentation of results.