Communication of psycho-educational assessment results: Remedial teachers' reading of assessment reports

Abstract

Psychological methods of assessing intelligence have been criticised because of
their limited diagnostic-remedial nature and especially their lack of potential for initiating effective and pragmatic intervention programmes. Similarly, the means through which the results of such methods are communicated in order to make them useful and constructive can be debated. In this research we aimed to establish the value of psycho-educational assessment reports in terms of the understanding and interpretation of the reports by their recipients, specifically remedial teachers, who participated in focus group discussions and offered their opinion on the utility of psycho-educational assessment reports. The outcomes of these focus group discussions pointed to the fact that psycho-educational assessment reports were problematic in the sense that they failed to provide useful, specific, and pragmatic information for learning support programmes to be developed from. The research revealed insights which may be of interest to psychologists writing assessment reports. Suggestions for multi-disciplinary collaboration are addressed.

Keywords: assessment report; communication of test results; learning support; psycho-educational assessment

South African Journal of Education Vol. 27 (1) 2007: pp. 1-18