Evaluation of cognitive skills in early childhood: Approaches, methods and limitations
Abstract
The cognitive skills may affect the way individuals understand the world, their social interactions, and academic performance throughout their lives. For such reasons, it is crucial to evaluate cognitive skills at an early stage in order to support the development and learning of young children and to regulate educational activities. Evaluation of cognitive skills also constitutes one of the important dimensions in measuring the purpose and quality of education. In order to decide how children’s cognitive skills can be evaluated, it is necessary to know the brain development of children and their related functions; to determine the theoretical approaches, appropriate methods, and techniques that form the basis of cognitive assessments, and their advantages and limitations. In this study, it is aimed to review and evaluate the existing approaches to how cognitive skills can be evaluated in early childhood. In this direction, the place of cognitive skills in early childhood in brain development and the approaches that formed the basis for the assessment of cognitive skills were examined, and then the advantages and limitations were discussed.
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