Autism Detection and Education Exercise and movement can affect ones' learning environment and kinesthetic learners in a variety of positive ways. Firstly, these two things induce an element of dynamism in one's learning environment, which is beneficial to kinesthetic learners. Kinesthetic learners learn best via the sort of motion and feeling associated with touch, so movement is merely an extension of this sort of tendency for learning. Additionally, these learners can thrive in an environment in which they can actually move and experience learning through the process of such motion -- which can very well involve directly apprehending things, instead of merely reading or listening to them. In this respect, exercise is a part of the kinesthetic learning style.

Persevering and never giving upon on a student embodies the Christian walk of faith and how Christ loves and forgives us in a number of different ways. Firstly, it is indicative of the sort of unconditional nature that Christ's love comprises. When there is a student who is aware that he or she needs a significant amount of assistance in a subject, yet is constantly rewarded with praise for his or her efforts and ability by a pedagogue who is as determined as that students to help him or her learn, that student can sense the sort of sincerity that the Christian senses in Christ's love. In those instances, both the instructor's approach and the loving forgiveness of Christ is both typified by an enduring nature that is hard to find elsewhere.

Formative assessments are those that take place during the learning process, and are used as a means of discerning a student's process and identifying what areas he or she still needs to work on. Generally, these assessments are informal (compared to summative ones) and involve low stakes. Summative assessments are issued at the conclusion of a unit of learning -- after students are already supposed to have learned whatever it is that particular unit is about (Starkman, 2006).

Formative and summative assessments can distinctly help educators to determine how to encourage students to reach their potential by never giving. In fact, they do so by illustrating in which specific areas students need remediation. These assessments actually help to assess the efficacy of the pedagogue in his or her instruction, since they reveal which points he or she might have been remiss in teaching students about a subject. Once teachers have the results of these assessments, they know what parts of learning task students need encouragement in, and they can offer help in those parts to aid in that encouragement.

Personally, I plan to integrate both of these forms of assessment into my instruction by using them interchangeably. I plan to make my formative assessments as informal as possible so that I can best gauge what areas students need both more help and encouragement. I will supplement these types of assessments with summative ones, so that I can truly ascertain what sort of mastery of a particular topic students have. In this respect I will seek to utilize some form of formative assessment every day, while implementing a summative assessment fortnightly or weekly.

Additional types of assessments include processes and outcome based assessments, in which one analyzes the various inputs and outputs of a process. This assessment would certainly have value in a classroom setting and for analyzing the progress of students. Another assessment I could use is a needs assessment. This sort of assessment could be implemented at the start of a particular unit. It would offer valuable information about what students already know, and what they do not know, about a particular subject.

References

Starkman, N. (2006). Formative assessment: building a better student. www.thejournal.com Retrieved from http://thejournal.com/articles/2006/09/01/formative-assessment -- building-a-better-student.aspx

Introduction

The journal article reviewed in this assignment is entitled "Screening for autism spectrum disorders with the brief infant-toddler social and emotional assessment." It was written by Kruizinga et al. This article directly relates to the topic of best practices in the assessment of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in that it focuses on the initial stages of such assessment -- screening for this condition as early as possible. One can argue that screening is the point of origination for the assessment of ASD; in the article's introduction, the authors (2014) note that "the average age of ASD diagnosis is approximately three years of age and often occurs later" (p.1). However, the basis for the study is that the symptoms that are indicative of this condition occur "before the second birthday" (Kruizinga et al., 2014, p. 1). Hence, the focus of this study is to determine and evaluate the effectiveness of detecting autism prior to patients turning three years old, which...

The article is based on testing the efficacy of that questionnaire.
Main Points

The chief method that the researchers use to produce this aim is the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) questionnaire. This questionnaire is used to detect other cognitive and social issues aside from ASD, although it incorporates ASD into the information that it yields as well. After providing a description of ASD and of BITSEA and its form -- which consists of 42 questions, the authors detail a brief literature review about BITSEA that enables them to hone their research design. Specifically, they are attempting to determine the accuracy of BITSEA relating to ASD in general and as it is pertaining to both boys and girls.

The method for this study is fairly simple, although it involves a great deal of statistical analyses of its data to determine the results. There are actually two samples that were respectively used: BITSEA, "from a community sample of 2-year-old children" (p. 2) was administered and ITSEA (which includes BITSEA items) was issued to "Children between the ages of 12-40 months" (p.2) in a separate study on Autism. The points of comparison between the two studies and respective samples was largely facilitated by a statistical measures known as the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, which yielded a number of different data including an Autism score, problem scale, competence scale, and a reference line. Moreover, further analyses were conducted by stratifying the BITSEA problem items and the BITSEA competence items, so that the researchers (2014) were able to analyze the demographic characteristics in addition to screening accuracy (p. 3).

The results demonstrated a marked ability in the propensity for this particular questionnaire, BITSEA, to detect instances in which ASD was present. Specifically, the study's "results indicate that the Problem and Competence scales and the Autism score have high screening accuracy to detect ASD (i.e. AUC>0.90) (p. 4). The results also yielded interesting findings regarding the questionnaire's ability to indicate ASD in boys and girls. Instead of showing an equal proclivity for doing so, the scale was actually "significantly better for girls…than for boys" (p. 1). Additionally, it was determined that the accuracy for screening was higher for Autism than it was for the scale specific to Problem.

Reflection

The ramifications of this study and the resulting journal article in regards to best practices for the assessment of ASD are considerable. Utilizing such measures as BITSEA, it is very well possible for health care professionals to detect the presence of ASD earlier than they typically do. As such, they can commence with the rest of the assessment process earlier, and ideally get patients the treatment and coping skills that they need earlier than they typically do so -- which should help them deal with this condition. For elucidating this information, this article was extremely efficacious.