Teaching Without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Children's Literacy Learning

Teaching without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Childrens Literacy Learningby Denny Taylor is the second book in Garn Press Women Scholars Series. This book revisits Taylors seminal and influential work based on her Biographic Literacy Profiles Project. Teaching without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Childrens Literacy Learning is a timely book that challenges the scientific assumptions of standardized testing in developing effective instruction to meet the literate lives of all students. Through detailed observations of student learning Taylor encourages readers to consider alternative ways of assessing childrens reading and writing based on observable literacy behaviors. Supporting a humanistic perspective to the education of children Taylor argues that standardized and diagnostic methods of assessment and teaching based on test-driven cooperate-led accountability practices have detrimental effects on children and result in the de-professionalization of teachers.