There may be enough scope for informal diagnosis in classrooms or at other instructional areas. The teacher diagnoses day in and day out as he helps the child with his thinking process and guides him in achieving the objective of his choice. At times, he looks thoroughly into areas of concern and adopts the scientific tools in order to make a formal diagnosis. He predicts a problem through observing the child’s movements over an adequate period of time. In baffling situations, the teacher may decide to maintain anecdotal details of the child’s behavior, socio-metric devices and periodical examinations.

Diagnosis is a matter of analyzing the elements of the child’s experience that doesn’t suit him. The teacher does not wait to make a formalized compilation of his research findings; he infers on the basis of his assumptions in daily activities and gets additional feedback. As an educational diagnostician, he keeps a watch on the children informally to get clues about each child.

He notices:

• interests of individual children and the types of activities each child seeks out on his own; 
• how the child engages himself in creative work; the way a child approaches; 
• which child is catching on, dropping out, lagging behind, and attending; 
• and the child’s tendency to lead or follow

The teacher uses tests to identify the areas of assets and areas of weaknesses. He encourages and lauds the efforts of the child during standardized test without disclosing the correct response. While analyzing the data of the test results, he looks for errors made by individuals or groups. He analyzes test results in relationship to his teaching. He interprets percentile and achievement scores in terms of what the raw scores mean. He keeps detailed cumulative records that describe behavior. He consults these records, as and when necessary. He refrains from labeling or judging a child on the basis of information contained in records. He refrains from judging the child on the basis of his past record or family background. He assesses the child’s growth patterns and looks for all the other factors, if any, that contribute to a child’s behavior.

He looks for relationships in data and for learning modalities. He determines whether these are integrated within the child. He looks at the results of the tests in relationship to chronological age, scholastic performance and emotional growth. He determines whether a child’s problems are due to physical, environmental or psychological factors. He helps the child make constructive plans and concrete goals.