Children and Assessment
In our educational climate today, I feel that too much emphasis is put on assessment. Although, I certainly feel that knowing what children can do is important I feel that standardized testing may not be the best measure of their knowledge or ability. For instance, children can have a bad test due to lack of sleep, illness, family stress, or other issues going on in their personal lives. Under these circumstances, children may not perform well on the test. I also feel that most standardized tests do not take into account cultural differences although in some states this is improving. I feel that America needs to place more focus on formative assessment and look at assessment before, during, and after instruction.
China is growing as a major world economy and the children of China are being educated as such. However, from the research that I have done recently in China the ministry of education is moving more toward formative assessment and placing less emphasis on standardized testing.
References
(2009) “Assessment and curriculum reform in China: EFL education at the tertiary level”
http://www.aare.edu.au/08pap/che08574.pdf
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As a fellow preschool teacher and a teacher who uses and emplements the, "The Creative Curriculum' I can appreciate its preschool formative assessemt tools, which focus on the five developmental domains, where information is gather by, teachers taking ancedol notes.
ReplyDeleteJoseph, you bring up great points about testing. Children can indeed get a bad mark on a test if they have lack of sleep, or are sick, etc. I feel that we pay too much attention to testing children, instead of just learning from them in their own natural environment when they play or interact with their peers.
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