Pedagogical documentation

I was reading this sentence and felt if this situation happened to me, I would be so proud of myself challenging the accepted assessment! As Alcock (2000) stated, “Pedagogical documentation may also be used to challenge accepted assessment practices such as the obsessive and sometimes exclusive reliance on individually written observations of individual children” (p. 3).

Although almost everyone knows about the child individualism, and believe in uniqueness, we still are forced to do the assessment and evaluate each child’s capability to pass the test. In the first week of this module, we had articles about the reliability, validity, and ... of the test. As Rock and Stenner (2005) explained, “A useful test must be reliable, which means that it will produce essentially the same results on different occasions. Reliability can be measured in three ways: retesting, equivalent form, and internal consistency” (p. 17). I still am confused to accept the reason that we need to assess and evaluate children to receive the rate of the school in the area.

We have observed children do great job in the class and have appropriate developmental skills, but have difficulty do the same in specific situations. We all can see the benefit of have both observation and evaluation in the settings. Alcock (2000) emphasized, “At a micro level (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) many centres in this country do use some forms of pedagogical documentation for the ongoing formative assessment of children's learning and evaluation of their programs. Written child observations are probably the most prevalent form of documentation” (p.8).

100 Languages for everone!

As I have been working on my PoP about the children who are English learners, I usually think of my topic and specifically about the word “Language”. I was reading this week article “pedagogical documentation: Beyond observation”, and I thought about the benefit of the documentation that I have been exposed to. The following sentence made me rethink about the correlation between a 100 language and the children from around the world who talk in the other language and have different cultures and values to express themselves:

“Multiple languages can facilitate communication between multiple groups, from children, to parents, to political and other "stakeholders".” (Alcock, 2000, P.8)

Don’t you think that we can assume the meaning could be related to all groups? I think by respecting other languages and cultures, we provide the accepting environment to children to express themselves in the variety of ways. For instance, in my workplace, we have an international twin who play together and talk in their own language. Some educators asked the supervisor to separate the children, so that they learn English faster. Others talked about their observations and the way that the twin help and support each other for creating new art and exploring their environment. We decided to have them both in our room to support them. I believe both “a hundred language”, and talking in different language can facilitate communication between multiple groups. :)

Module 2

Here is my module two assignment, I am looking forward to receive your feedback to improve its content. Thank you!

   

English Language Learners

I know this is a late note, but I cannot stop thinking of the children who are getting assesses at the time they enter kindergarten or the new grades! I had the same experience myself being anxious and worried about the result. In addition, reading about the teacher social skills rating (TSRS) made me think of my POP about children who are English language learners. In my opinion, not knowing English has effect on most of the skills. As I talked with my colleagues, infants and toddlers generally don’t communicate verbally, so ELL child can easily play and imitate other children (parallel play). “Observing and imitating peers, beginning to play “follow the peer” games, and observing and playing briefly with peers” are the indicators of the “social interest” (ELECT, 2007, p. 35). On the other hand, older children have more difficulties to adopt to the new environment and socialized, as language becomes more dominant in the social skills. For ELL child, who just join the English environment, the language become barrier to communicate effectively. “Not speaking the same language is a barrier to inclusion” (Hardacre & Dumais, 2013, p. 485).

Rock &Stenner (2005) mentioned, “ ‘Interpersonal skills’ rates the child’s behavior in forming and maintaining friendships; getting along with people who are different; helping and comforting other children; expressing feelings, ideas, and opinions in positive ways; and being sensitive to the feelings of others” (P. 22). My concern is how the educators are able to assess those children even in the other aspect of developmental stage when the child is not able to communicate and express her/his self?

Furthermore, they might have hard time expressing their feeling to resolve any conflict with peers which is one of the indicator of “Conflict Resolution and Social Problem-Solving Skills” (ELECT, 2007, p. 43). On the other hand, exposed to new language can be handled easier in preschool than older children. “Social language can be picked up more quickly, through mimicking in social interactions” (Hardacre & Dumais, 2013, p. 471).

Also, what if the children get frustrated because they cannot express themselves? Are they consider as a behavioral problem?  As Rock & Stenner (2005) stated, “ ‘Externalizing problem behaviors’ measures the likelihood that a child argues, fights, gets angry, acts impulsively, and disrupts ongoing activities. ‘Internalizing problem behaviors’ measures anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, and sadness.”  I am afraid if the culture and the language differences cause children to get the low mark from their assessment, so that they feel different from others.