Timeline
Foundational Origins
Early 2000s
Initial developmental work was undertaken by researchers, adapting methodologies from the British Sign Language (BSL) Receptive and Production Skills Tests.
National Project Work
2014–2015
The Auslan Assessment and Early Intervention Strategies Project (AAEISP) led to the development of early testing batteries and definitive adaptations of the BSL tests for Australian signing contexts.
Tool Publication
2016
The official Assessing Auslan Development Tool is published by VDEI. It is officially recognised as the only standardised measure of its kind in Australia for this demographic.
The Assessing Auslan Development tool(opens in a new window) was developed in 2016 by VDEI in partnership with Professor Adam Schembri and La Trobe University. Professor Schembri is Reader in Linguistics in the Department of English Language & Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK.
The Assessing Auslan Development tool is the first standardised assessment tool to be developed for Auslan and has been adapted from the Assessing British Sign Language Development: Receptive Skills and Production Skills Tests.
The assessment tool is designed to measure the Auslan competence of children aged between 4 and 11 years who use Auslan as a primary mode of communication or who are learning Auslan as a second language.
With an increased need to train additional assessors and the challenges of providing on-site training workshops, VDEI plans to digitise the assessment resources and explore the possibility of working with Professor Adam Schembri to create an online training module.
Updated