As a group of international scholars with experience in diverse international contexts across both the global south and north, we have become concerned about the increasingly rapid flow and (re)circulation of problematic, summative literacy assessments and international efficiency narratives. Our concerns, in part, are about how these assessments imagine children and their learning. In this presentation, we will examine the implementation of summative literacy assessments and accompanying data–driven instruction in elementary/primary classrooms around the globe.  Specifically, we ask epistemological questions about the nature of summative assessment, by analysing examples of summative literacy assessments from across diverse international contexts, to see how those assessments imagine and represent children and childhood.  We then turn our attention to formative assessments and explore how formative literacy assessment practices might be utilised to re-envision children and childhood while revealing promising instructional practices that have the potential to support student learning as well.

The circulation of summative literacy assessments across international contexts not only promotes problematic views of children, childhood and learning; but it also privileges Eurocentric, English dominant, colonialising, and narrow notions of literacy education and becoming literate, denying diversity and multiplicity which are two important principles of understanding literacy as a social practice. This we argue, is counter to equitable literacy teaching and learning. Commercial interests, the testing industry, and the commodification of testing, have contributed to the circulation of these assessments, and neoliberal ideologies have contributed to the proliferation of assessment practices across diverse international contexts without any heed paid to local social and cultural literacy understandings.

As scholars who have worked in the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United States, we have individually and collectively encountered both summative and formative literacy assessment practices.  These assessment practices often have global talons originating in other parts of the world and promote policy practices that entail global policy borrowing.  Significantly, we are all employed by universities, teach in mid-sized or large urban areas, and engage with communities and schools where the dominant language is English.  While each context brings its own set of challenges, policies and resources, we share a commitment to children who have been historically underserved in schools.  We are particularly interested in how assessment practices have evolved in our respective systems and countries and how summative literacy assessments position children that schooling has historically failed to serve.

In this presentation, we open with two compelling views of childhood. Both situate children as capable of learning and knowing; however, one places the onus on leading, directing, and controlling children’s learning.  The goal from this way of thinking is to measure and evaluate learning in relation to narrow, linear, and pre-determined learning progressions (Apple, 2011; Ball, 2021; Carnoy, 2015; Ravitch, 2013).  The other (Gandini, 1993; Montessori, 2013) views learning as idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and stunningly contingent on each child’s vision of the world, particular interests and experiences, and their communities. We briefly review each perspective and reveal critical epistemological differences that operate below the surface of these perspectives as we conceptualise literacy learning for young children.

Our understandings of these theoretical differences led us to consider the international flow of literacy assessments –both summative and formative. Specifically, we ask what circulates, for what purposes, and what do these global flows mean for children and their becoming literate. We then introduce readers to a range of summative literacy assessments and the policies and purposes surrounding their use.

Methodologically, we identified a summative literacy assessment used in three contexts, and focused on the international roots of these assessments and their relevance to assessment policy in diverse international contexts, including systems within the European Union. Criteria were used to select the assessments. These summative assessments were: • used in schools and influence in how educators teach literacy, • focused on young children and literacy, and • circulated internationally, either in their current form or as sets of assessment principles taken up and applied in new international spaces. We used discourse analysis to analyse documents surrounding each assessment. We explored the official, stated purpose for each assessment; revealed epistemological claims; discussed their international roots; and explore their flow and (re)circulation. Finally, we look across international system’s contexts, to identify other assessment practices shared by these example summative assessments, and identify assumptions about children and literacy learning operating through these assessment practices. The following assessments were analysed utilising discourse analysis, before the cross comparative analysis to investigate the global (re)circulation of policy talons in global south and north contexts : Australia: A centerpiece of assessment in Australia - the National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) - was introduced in 2008 to test children in years three, five, seven, and nine using a suite of tests across four domains: reading, writing, language conventions, and numeracy. Children take these tests each May and in the weeks prior to testing, significant learning time is allocated to test-taking practice. South Africa: While NAPLAN is supposedly a locally produced, tailored assessment for the Australian context, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international systemic evaluation of literacy in children’s home language or the language of instruction administered in grade 4. It has been administered every five years since 2001 by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). It aims to provide internationally comparative data on children’s reading achievement. United States: The Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) was developed in 2006 by the Research International Triangle for US-AID. EGRA is a version of DIBELS, formerly a popular assessment in US schools. It has been adapted for use in African nations where international NGOs use it to track children’s reading progress. EGRA entails a series of one-minute assessments that measure the acquisition of supposedly discrete literacy skills, including phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, accuracy and fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Analytical methods have helped us to ascertain how summative assessments have often operated and (re)circulated in conjunction with instructional standards and educational practices in international spaces. Specifically, literacy assessments have been used to control what is taught and to mandate sets of literacy skills that all children are expected to learn. These standards have had a constraining force on local curricular decision-making as standards and benchmarks have become synonymous with achievement. However, these assessment systems appear to ignore what educators know about equitable, high quality, child-centered assessment systems and their role in literacy pedagogy and curriculum. Large-scale literacy assessments that are used summatively are grounded in neoliberal and mechanical views of childhood and literacy that invite data–driven scripted and programmatic instruction, invoke and respond to supposedly universal conceptions of childhood, ignore the linguistic and literacy repertoires of multilingual children, often undermine and negate teachers’ professional judgement, and are driven by the investment of capital rather than the interests of children. We connect international flows of assessment practices and policies to international missions to measure learning in order to compare learners and their teachers, and alert readers to the operation of largescale summative assessments as colonising forces. Our goal is to raise awareness of the childhood-literacy-theory nexus that operates through the uses of assessments. Finally, we argue for the affordances of formative assessment including opportunities to discover what children know, individualise and inform instruction, honor cultural and linguistic diversity, and contribute to the development of teacher expertise.

Ball, S. J. (2021). The Education Debate. Policy Press. Carnoy, M. (2015). International Test Score Comparisons and Educational Policy: A Review of the Critiques. National Education Policy Center. Gandini, L. (1993). Fundamentals of the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. Young children, 49(1), 4-8. Montessori, M. (2013). The Montessori Method. Transaction publishers. Ravitch, Diane. "Hoaxes in educational policy." The Teacher Educator 49.3 (2014): 153-165.