Development of the Teacher Assessment of Student Communicative Competence (TASCC) for Grades 1 Through 5

Abstract

With increased calls for documenting the educational impact of communication deficits and treatment outcomes, the need for systematic measures of students' communicative effectiveness in the classroom has never been greater. Teachers are in an excellent position to observe and measure their students' verbal and nonverbal communicative abilities and use of compensatory strategies; thus, speech-language pathologists in schools may benefit from a use of teacher rating scales. This article describes the initial development and possible applications of such a measure, the Teacher Assessment of Student Communicative Competence (TASCC), for use with students in the first through fifth grades.

Assessing Child and Adolescent Pragmatic Language Competencies: Toward Evidence-Based Assessments

“…This search resulted in the identification of 11 questionnaires, 2 checklists, and 11 tests, containing 1082 items. Figure 1 provides the names of the questionnaires/checklists and tests, date of publication, and what kinds of reference distributions and age ranges are included for each test (Academic Communication Associates 1989; Adams and Bishop 1989;Adams et al 2001;Bishop 2003Bishop , 2004Bishop and Adams 1989;Bloom et al 1999;Bowers et al 1994;Brice 1992;Carrow-Woolfolk 1999;Kleiman 1994;Leonard et al 2002;Penn 1988;Phelps-Terasaki and Phelps-Gunn 1992;Prutting and Kirchner 1987;Rinaldi 1996Rinaldi , 2001Rubin 1985;Semel et al 2003;Seymour et al 2003;Smith et al 2000;Stott et al 2002;Wiig 1990;Wiig and Secord 1988).…”

Testing for language competence in children and adolescents.

“…Russell and Grizzle (2008) conducted an extensive review of the various pragmatic language assessments such as structured participant observations, diagnostic measures, behavioral checklists, and questionnaires and made recommendations on test selection. The Teacher Assessment of Student Communicative Competence (Smith, McCauley, & Guitar, 2000), the Children's Communication Checklist-2 (Bishop, 2006), the Pragmatic Profile, and the Observational Rating Scale of the CELF-IV ranked highest in terms of strong content validity in the group of observation instruments and questionnaires. Of these, the Children's Communication Checklist and the Pragmatic Profile are considered good screening instruments when used along with structured observation data.…”