During the course Early
Childhood Development I have gained new insight regarding prenatal development
through middle childhood development. I am thankful for each one of my
colleagues’ insights that they had posted on their personal blogs. It has been
through these blogs that I have learned about the importance of breast-feeding. Susan Johnson had posted great research on
how breast-feeding has a positive impact on infants development. I had also
found the information that Mahitab Wasfy blogged about the view of intelligence
testing in Egypt. I am thankful that I have been able to learn from
professionals who are actively involved in the Early Childhood field. I would
like to thank each one of my colleagues for openly sharing their research and
personal options on their blogs.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Quotes regarding Childhood Development
“We should spend less time
ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural
competencies and gifts and cultivate these. There are hundreds and hundreds of
ways to succeed and many, many different abilities that will help you get
there.”
- Howard Gardner
“The path of
development is a journey of discovery that is clear only in retrospect, and
it’s rarely a straight line.”
-Eileen Kennedy-Moore
Retrieved from
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/child-development
"The first duty of an education is to stir up life, but leave it free to develop."
-Maria Montessori
“Our aim is not only to
make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to
touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core.”
-
Maria Montessori
Retrieved
from http://junojuno2.tripod.com/words.html
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Assessment
I personal believe that administrators tend to put to much
emphasis on standardized testing. Educators feel the pressure of having their
students receive the desire scores on the standardized test. The pressures of
these scores can create an educational atmosphere that teaches facts about the
test. The pressures put on educators is creating an educational system that
Vygotsky had noticed and wanted to change. Vygotsky had noticed that the
educational system was becoming memorization (Stassen Berger, 2009). While
standardized testing is informative, it should not be the only means of
measuring students’ achievement. All aspects of school play an important role
in education. Assessment should be both formal and informal. The school system
should take the formal assessment of standardized testing and then combine that
with the informal assessments that have been made about that child throughout
the school year. Some children have test anxieties, which can cause them to
have lower scores on the standardized testing. Other students may have a
learning disability that may affect their test scores. So it is imperative to
take the test scores as a part of the child’s learning process and not the
whole. Some of the informal testing would be measuring the students’ critical
thinking skills. It is also important to see how the students work with one
another, their social skills. Every aspect of school should be considered when
measuring the child’s development during that year.
I wanted to study China and find out why their test scores
are higher then other countries. According to Mark McDonald (2012), a writer
for the International Herald Tribune, testing becomes a whole community affair.
Everyone in the community will go the extra mile to make sure that students are
given the best testing atmosphere possible. McDonald said that the Chinese
would go as far as blocking off roads that could go near a testing sight. This
emphasis on standardized testing has always been a part of the Chinese culture
(Mr. D’s Neighborhood, 2010). The reason for the emphasis on standardized
testing is to prepare the students for the Gaokao (Huff Post, 2012). The Gaokao
will determine what time of future a child in China will have (Huff Post,
2011). Most students who come from a wealthier background have a higher
percentage on doing well on the Gaoko (Mr. D’s Neighborhood, 2010). The Chinese
authorizes are starting to reevaluate the emphasis that has been placed on test
scores (Huff Post, 2011). “When
faculty of a major Chinese university asked [Professor Jonathan] Plucker to
identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized
curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. "After my answer
was translated, they just started laughing out loud," Plucker says.
"They said, 'You're racing toward our old model. But we're racing toward
your model, as fast as we can.' (Huff Post, 2011)"
I found it interesting that a University professor noticed
that America is turning to rote memorization due to the pressures put on
standardized testing. This is the same thing that Vygotosky had noticed. We
need to find a way to combine the standardized testing scores to other forms of
learning. We cannot expect all children to fit the same mold. Each child is
different and unique and with that uniqueness they all posses different types
of knowledge. As educators we need to find what the students excel in and how
to assess that knowledge. We also need to find ways to help students master the
standards that have to be met by using their natural interest.
Huff Post. (2011). Education In China v. America: The
Question Of Standardized Tests. Education. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/education-in-china-testing-diane-sawyer_n_785016.html
McDonald, Mark. (2012). Putting Chinese Students to the Test. International Herald Tribune. Retrieved from http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/putting-chinese-students-to-the-test/
Mr. D’s Neighborhood. (2010). How Standardized Testing Created, then Destroyed, an Empire.
Retrieved from http://mrdsneighborhood.com/2010/09/13/how-standardized-testing-created-then-destroyed-an-empire/
Stassen Berger, Kathleen. (2009). The Developing Person
through childhood 5th edition. New York, NY: Worth Publishers
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)