Learner Profiler Testing Tips

What Does the Learner Profiler

Measure?• The assessment measures prior academic experience in

the form of literacy and numeracy tests.

• The Profiler also collects demographic and social data in order to contextualise the

results

Do you need to be a registered professional in order to use the Learner Profiler?

• The LP is an educational assessment system and is not a psychological or occupational skills assessment and

therefore NO Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) registration is required;

• The LP does not assess for personality or intelligence quotient (IQ) and can therefore be used by anyone interested in education matters;

• The LP can be used by professional persons as well as provincial, district and school-based staff.

The Profiler System

Collects:• Screen for academic ability• Identify literacy and numeracy levels and support required

• Screen for learner abilities and hidden (dis)abilities• Collect learner social context and support information• Track learner progress and

plan support programmes

What Makes Profiler so Unique?

• It creates local norms (benchmarks) in real-time;

• It creates national, provincial, district, class, grade and individual performance benchmarks for every test;

• It updates norms every time one or thousands of tests are completed –on a minute by minute basis;

• It provides deep information (data) on every learners literacy and numeracy performance supported by social and demographic data in every report

Local South African

languages

Compares apples to

apples

Offline and online testing

Laptop; TabletCell phone; Desktop

Tell me more about the Learner

Profiler?Screening, Identification, Assessment

& Support Tool

White Paper 6?SIAS 2014 Policy?

Schools that use the Learner Profiler

produce amazing reports and support

programmes for learners

Literacy is Like

a Railway Track

Give Educators the Tools to Help Them Support the

Learner

In a multi-layered and culturally complex society here in South Africa (and Africa), assessing for literacy and numeracy competency and providing social context information is more useful to educators who want to support a learner. Such results is undeniably more reliable for learner support needs than using test matrices that are often based on contentious and questionably normed “intelligence” assessments.

Gerald Williamson – Educationist and Clinical Psychologist

I would advise that we rather assess for literacy and numeracy as indicators of school success and academic ability.

Literacy Track

Numeracy Track

Without Adequate Literacy and Numeracy Skills Very Little of the World of Information Becomes Accessible – Future Academic or

Formal Learning Becomes a No-Go Zone!

The LP:

Assessing the Railway Tracks of Learning

Phonics and other tests

SpellingReading

Sound – letter correspondence

Orthographic skillsSound segmentation

skills

Sound discrimination

Vocabulary

Words Non-wordsWords Non-words

Single Passage

ComprehensionSpeed

Writing

Planning Organisation

Grammar Punctuation

Memory

RWS symptom based tests

Rhyme Alliteration

Coda Syllabification

Handwriting Typing

Visual skills

Accuracy Fluency

Assessing for Support NOT for Exclusion

Important• Educators assess for classroom support

• Regardless of language of learning and teaching (LOLT) – understanding learner proficiency and support needs for the English language is important

• Mother-tongue literacy and numeracy assessment is important to ascertain conceptual needs

Assess Both

Profiler is developing rapidly to

accommodate many learners

Sotho

Afrikaans

English

Tswana

Zulu

Xhosa

If You Can

How Long Does an Assessment with the Learner Profiler Take?

How long is a piece of string?

“But testing takes too long”

If a child is one year behind in their ability, that means 2000 hours behind.

Profiler would need

just 4 hours per

year.

So monitoring and evaluation takes

0.2%.

0.2%.

0.2% of

hours per year

Some children and teens depending on their age would need more or less time when doing an assessment. When assessing for

support, you are trying to find out what the student needs for support, what they know and what they do not know

Profiler Testing Time

Profiler

Lessons

1-4 hours per annum(includes repeat/ progress testing)

LP for Placement Purposes:

Although literacy attainment is difficult to categorise per grade or age – the LP has

collected norms around our test batteries and is able to

provide some guidelines on measurement

benchmarks per grade.

Age benchmarks are more difficult as there are different

ages in a grade in many a South African classroom

What Do I Use The Social Information For?

• This is self-reported by the learner.

• It helps the educator to develop insight into the learner’s day-to-day challenges

• These insights allow for better school, adult, social and home-support

• Batteries such as the bullying information helps us understand exposure to trauma

• Study Skills helps us to know how to train the learner to tackle time, organise themselves and approach content and exams

• How I learn helps educators and counsellors to identify patterns of learning that forms the symptomology of common learning barriers and diagnoses. The PROFILER DOES NOT DIAGNOSE learners!

The PROFILER DOES NOT DIAGNOSE/LABEL learners!

Can the Profiler Assess Adults?• Literacy and numeracy has no age graded norm. An adult

may read similar to an 8 year old child but it does not mean the adult is similar in learning level as a child

• The Profiler has collected the norms of thousands in South Africa and updates its norms on a daily basis. We prefer to reflect literacy scores as a function of your competency, not an age comparison (BOX APPROACH) – DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS ACROSS THE WORLD READ AT DIFFERENT LEVELS. It is better to offer level comparisons. Age comparisons can be demeaning.

• For schools, we offer a grade level average for purposes of placement and support requirements. Students are clustered according to learning needs (ability) and (dis) ability. Lessons can be structured around ability to read for example.

Schools Should Equip Learners……

• You are assessing for support in areas of learning such as literacy and numeracy – no matter what the age

• Use the results to identify where the learner needs support

• It does not matter what type of barrier the learner experiences – the literacy and numeracy results are indicators of the academic success

• Content mastery (subjects) are for most only an indication of how well the learner “memorised” or “rote-learned” the content in most cases unless one has a pedagogical enquiry type curriculum. For the rest exams and testing are mere memory testing exercises

What About LOLT (Language of Learning and Teaching) Assessment?

• The Profiler is also geared to assess in mother-tongue languages such as Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho and Xhosa with more languages being completed in the near future

A South Africa Firsts Web Based LOLT Assessment Tool in Literacy and Numeracy

2017 Release

Talk to Me About Reports

See Separate Support

Doc/Videos

Overview (by location)

Completed at local level

Bands

By location

Itemanalysis

Profiler has many different types of reports

See Separate Support

Doc/Videos

Profiler Has Backend Data Analytics, Norming and Psychometric properties

Only for high level analysis and by special request

Contact Details:

Gerald Williamsongerald@shapingthelearner.com

Tel: 011-682 1716