Saturday, July 18, 2015

What is Assessment in Early Childhood?

  • What does “Assessment” mean in terms of being an educator?
  • Do we make meaning about “the whole child” by questioning and/or observing children?
  • Do we respect individualism by assessing children?
  • What kind of assessment tools would be more beneficial for both children and educators to be used?
  • What does assessment do in terms of being a child?
  • Does the whole child and the family being considered in the assessment?
  • Does it help children to get to know their interests and needs?
I have begun my journey to this course by those questions from both educators and children’s point of views. I believe assessment might standardize the way that children were expected to learn and could give them some guideline to improve themselves. On the other hand, it is not fair to assess everyone in a same way. Having pre-written assessment test at the center that I work made me think of the children who do not fit in the category of their own age. Specially, I could see the difference for children who are English learners. As Blandford and Knowles (2012) stated, “Each child is unique and the ongoing process of collecting evidence of learning, both formally and informally can be a challenge task for the practitioners” (P.491). Furthermore, the cultural difference plays a role in the children behaviors as well. For instance, some parents pay more attention to tangible outcome of learning. This has effect on their expectation and would change the dynamic of learning toward that. In addition, we had some discussion about “DAP” last semester which made me really think about assessment practices and if it is the best practice. As Paki& Caulcutt (2011) stated, “Many have criticized DAP by questioning the ethnocentricity in the assessments' view of what is typical child development” (p. 37).

Reading this week articles have changed my negative perspective of assessment. As Blandford and Knowles (2012) described, “In practice, AFL [Assessment For Learning] means children and practitioners working together to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there” (p.488). I have also done the brief research about the children who are English learners. My research showed, the second language learners might have some delay in their learning, but most of them would meet their developmental stages.

I believe, in the situation of being an educator, not a specialist, some children may need more time to transfer to the next developmental stage, so the timing should be used as sign to investigate and assess the child’s development. The result of assessment might be/not be applicable for individual. According to Luna & Heimer (2012), “Creative Curriculum also supports a range of teaching approaches,…, offers advice for how to adapt instruction to different types of learners, including those with special needs, gifted children, and second language learners. [it] guides teachers to use naturalistic forms of assessment which directly contribute to supporting individual learning as well as to program evaluation” (p.125). We also know, the best result would be found when the family and the educators work together to foster children’s learning.

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