"What should children be taught in the years from birth through age 8? How would we know if they are developing well and learning what we want them to learn? And how could we decide whether programs for children from infancy through the primary grades are doing a good job?" NAEYC, 2009
HOW SHOULD WE ASSESS THEIR LEARNING?
My interest for study has been channeled to seeking to know what the best practices are when we assess young children. I have seen young children being taught then, tested periodically and then graded and I have since wanted something more but I've been unskilled and unlearned, so I saw this opportunity and I seized it with lots of zest to be schooled in the principles of sound and appropriate assessment practices.
I work with young children and the field of early childhood like I shared in the last course is yet to have the recognition of the Governments and policy makers as it deserves to enable it thrive and become a full fleshed body having affiliates and investors as it is in some advanced countries. This is the dream that I have for the field of Early Childhood in Nigeria, and lately, there is a faint sound of hope that I hope will grow. Thus, there are no guides, no uniformity, no structure and no regulation as it were. Thriving early childhood programs seek best practices and this is why I want to know about the principles of effective quality assessment in early childhood.
It has been really tedious learning about assessment because its like starting from ABC, as I had no prior knowledge about anything. So to pick my sub topics got me reading wide to see what kind of assessments are there for me to make a choice of the one I think I would want to learn more about. My reading led me to make a choice of formative assessment and I have learned a few vital things about how this is a very good practice to employ when working with young children.
The three articles I chose to do my research simulation on had a lot to say about what studies already exists concerning formative assessments. They all shared similar features of what one should look out for in a formative assessment. Their writing styles and focus were all different as I believe that their objectives too were different.
Formative assessment is a systematic process to continuously gather evidence about learning. The data are
used to identify a student’s current level of learning and to adapt lessons to help the student reach the desired
learning goal. I think this practice is child centered and therefore a good choice when assessing young children as children are able to get involved in their own learning.
Building research competence via the structured chart is a good guide by my opinion because it helps to keep one guided in the midst of the so wide issue of research in which there s a lot to learn.
My reading this week brought me to something I think we should pay closer attention to. One of the authors did say that the field of early childhood needs to pay closer attention to the issue of assessment. She did share that assessment has traditionally not been a focus of preservice and inservice courses. Teachers learn how to teach without learning much about how to assess. Even their administrators lack training in assessment and therefore do not have the skills to support the development of assessment competencies (Heritage, 2007).
Here are the links to some of the resources I worked with this week.
Chappius, J., & Chappius, S. (2008). The best value in formative assessment. Educational Leadership, 65(4), 14–19.
NAEYC/NAECS/SDE (2009) Where we stand on curriculum assessment and program evaluation .http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/StandCurrAss.pdf
Praise,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds as if you are attempting to make innovative changes in the way that your students are assessed. I am an advocate of formative assessments as well. It is important that children are assessed using a systematic process. I feel that we sometime place too much emphasis on annual achievement test scores and do not gain a true measure of how much individual growth a child is making throughout the year. If proper assessments are not done, then teachers cannot not successfully modify educational goals for their students.