Assessing Children

Assessing children can be positive or negative. It can be positive because the abilities of the child can be assessed. It can be negative because the whole child is not assessed. When a child is assessed, the assessor and all involved only see a snapshot of the child's abilities. I really think that Gardner and Brofenbrenner were on to something with their theories. Gardner's Multiple Intelligences believes that children have different intelligences, such as linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, etc. Brofenbrenner believes that they best what to assess children is in their natural environment. I, agree with both of these theories, because assessing children only through testing, does not offer a fair and justifiable understanding about what the child can actually do. When assessing children, I think that the child should be observed within a child friendly learning environment that invites the child to be themselves. Assessing their social skills, cognitive skills, physical skills based on their age and developmental stage can help to give an accurate view of the child's abilities.

When preparing for this blog post, I looked for information regarding assessment methods from around the region and world. What I found was that PISA also known as Programme for International Student Assessment is being used to assess children. The general age starts at 15. It's main goal is to offer school systems and other stakeholders the progress that is being made in schools and whether or not students are mastering key learning concepts.