Authentic assessment in early intervention and the importance of complementary functional and normative assessment in psychoeducation
Early intervention is a set of services (assessment, teaching/rehabilitation) provided by a team of professionals aimed at improving the development of very young children (0 to 5 years). In early intervention, psychoeducators are recognized for their ability to construct an individual profile of the child’s adaptation in his daily life. The information required for this purpose is often times difficult to access by interview or through the use of traditional standardized assessments. This individual profile of the child (strengths and needs) is useful for planning and implementing appropriate interventions. Currently, concerns are being raised in psychoeducation about the increased use of normative assessments to identify a problem without the goal of supporting the intervention. For several years, in early intervention the scientific literature has highlighted the lack of meaningful links between normative results from standardized tests and functional descriptions of early development and early intervention. Indeed, the items of these tests are sometimes micro-skills not very useful in the child’s daily life. «Authentic» assessment has been developed to respond to this gap, characterized by the observation of the skills necessary for the independent functioning of children in their daily environments. This article is a reflection on the relevance of authentic assessment in a psychoeducational assessment context. First, we will discuss the requirements and characteristics of psychoeducational assessment. We will then define the parameters of authentic assessment based on a literature review. Finally, we will discuss the relevance of authentic assessment in psychoeducation, in particular, because it is based on shared experience and meets the standards of best practices in the assessment of young children.