When pedagogy is defined as it has been in this volume—as
an interactional construct that reflects a joint focus on the child’s
status and the characteristics of the educational setting—two conditions
are critical for the assessment of learning (see Meisels,
1999, for an elaboration of these ideas). First, there must be sustained opportunities for the interactions between teacher and
child to occur, and, second, these interactions must occur over
time, rather than on a single occasion. This view does not hold
that one can round up all of the kindergarten children in a community
on a given day and test them to determine what they
know and can do. Rather, it suggests that learning can be assessed
only over time and in context.