This set of four research reports is a product of the Mathemagenic Activities Program (MAP) for early childhood education of the University of Georgia Follow Through Program. Based on Piagetian theory, the MAP provides sequentially structured sets of curriculum materials and processes that are designed to continually challenge children in kindergarten through third grade from low income families to learn about the psysical and social environments. These four reports come from a conference on new perspectives in developmental assessment. The contribution of ethology to the assessment of education is discussed in a paper that (1) briefly overviews the ethological perspective and its methods and (2) discusses "education" among animals, and education in preliterate human societies and in industrial societies. In another paper, the importance of social forms of language use in contexts of interaction and their relevance to measurement of language competencies are discussed and illustrated with examples from Black and Jewish cultures. A report offering new perspectives on the education of the ethnically varied population of the United States advocates moving away from the melting pot concept. In the final paper the issues of validly determining a child's knowledge base are explored in terms of contradictions between children's test performance and classroom behavior. Researchers are urged to conduct task and situational analyses in order to define context variables that influence a child's ability to solve problems. (Author/RH)