Having been a part of
assessing children for the past six years, whether it be through my
undergraduate work or employment, I have found two main advantages. First, when
looking at the holistic development of a child one can assess and see how the
child is doing developmentally. Are there areas that a child needs to improve
on? Is there an area that a child excels in? Assessing a child’s holistic
development gives the teacher assistance with creating lesson plans. A teacher
can individualize lesson plans for an individual child or for the whole class.
Secondly, assessing a child’s holistic development at a young age can help one
to find developmental delays or disabilities. When this is identified at a
young age the child can begin receiving the necessary supports and services to
possibly decrease the severity of the delay.
In Sweden when looking
at a child’s holistic development and assessing it they look at language,
literacy, numeracy, and personal and social development (David, 1998) . They use the
assessment for diagnostic purposes and to assess a school’s value (David, 1998) . This assessment
begins at the primary school age (David, 1998) .
In comparison American
holistic assessment and Sweden holistic development have a few things in
common. When looking at a child’s holistic development in America one is
evaluating social, physical, cognitive, language, literacy, math, science,
social studies, and the arts. The criteria for these areas are varied by age. Both
American and Swedish assessment focus on language, literacy, social
development, and mathematics. It appears based on my research that American
assessment looks at all spectrums whereas Sweden development is more specific.
I believe that there
are many different ways in which a child can be assessed for development, but
it is more of a matter of what is done with that assessment. It is important to
make sure the assessment is to benefit the child and not label the child. For
example one might do an assessment and say a child is below average, average,
or above average. By placing this label I do not believe there is an advantage.
The data should be used to benefit a child’s learning experience as described
above.
References
David, T. (1998). Researching Early Childhood
Education: A European Perspective. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage
Publications Inc.
Lisa, I agree with your opening statements regarding the benefits of testing. These types of assessments should occur on a rolling basis and be varied and holistic. I think you are absolutely correct in stating that the tests should be used to focus on how to help the child succeed for the benefit of the child. I think there are many instances where theses test carry more importance in measuring curriculum, instruction and overall school performance rather than what support any particular child is in need of.
ReplyDeleteAssessment is important because of all the decisions you will make about children when teaching and caring for them. The decisions facing teachers involve how best to educate children. Like them, you will be called upon every day to make decisions before, during, and after your teaching. Whereas some decisions will seem small and inconsequential, others will be “high stakes,” influencing the life course of children.
ReplyDeleteLisa, I completely agree with you on it being important to access and know where the child is and how much they know and I also agree that labeling children is ineffective unless it is directly tied into making a plan to help the child succeed where he may be struggling. My issue with standardized testing is that while it covers said subject, the content on the test compared against the curriculum covered for the year might not overlap. Anxiety is also another concern of mine, some children simply cannot sit in a large quiet room and succeed on a test that they know is the deciding factor to whether they move up a grade or not.
ReplyDeleteand in response to your response to my blog (thank you by the way),
I didn't mean that line as in we are the only ones that believe in standardized testing, but a lot of the websites that I saw online had statements along the lines of other countries not agreeing with standardized testing (or at least it weighing so heavily on the students academic career) because of the stress and curriculum factors. I'm sorry, as I reread that I realized that part could have been more clear. The sites that said that seemed to be opinion based, with discussions from school boards and teachers, but nothing was anchored in research and I did learn about other countries that do have standardized testing so I did not dig deeper, just shared what I noticed. Thank you for your feedback :)
-Sherria
Lisa Bromwell at http://lisabrownell.blogspot.com/2014/06/holistic-development.html, thank you for your prompt posting during this course. It may seem small but it was a huge help is allowing me to be successful during this course. At times I was able to read your ideas to help foster my own and at other times I was able to turn in my assignments on time within the time I allocated my self each week for class work. It made a huge difference as I had peace of mind knowing that my assignment was complete and submitted rather than needing to constantly check for new postings!
ReplyDelete