AUGMENTING TRADITIONAL ASSESSMENT AND INFORMATION - THE VIDEOSHARE MODEL

Traditional quantitative approaches to assessment convey limited descr iptions of children. Although norms and numbers do provide valuable in formation about children, they are static representations and cannot p resent the whole picture. In contrast, video assessment is a powerful approach that captures the dynamics of movement, bodily expression, an d emotion, and thus it can provide an accurate and richly detailed dep iction of a child's abilities and development. Video assessment seems to be an appropriate component of portfolio approaches to the assessme nt of young children. This article briefly reviews the literature on t he use and effectiveness of video assessment in educational and clinic al settings. It then describes how the Videoshare model takes advantag e pf the capacity of video records to provide graphically descriptive records that can serve as a valuable supplement to traditional assessm ent measures and sources of information. Finally, the article reports the results of surveys that evaluated families', teachers', and other Child Study Team members' satisfaction with video assessment.