Student Assessment in Primary Years

No matter the age of the child, all learning does require some measure of assessment in order to understand where the child is developmentally. However, all the way through middle school (at least) that measure of assessment should be focused on all developmental domains in some capacity. When we think about a holistic approach to child/student assessment in terms of school age children some areas of measurement could include:

• Language and Effective Communication Skills
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Social and Emotional Intelligence
• Physical Development and Health
• Diverse Cultural Understanding and Competency
• Approaches to Learning and Systems Thinking Capacity
• Technological Capability

New Zealand once again appears to serve as a model of the hands-on methods of assessment that are focused on a holistic approach. It seems that their assessment of student learning in the primary school years is driven by student learning and teachers have the responsibility to conduct assessments in ways that reflect what and how students learn. In fact, there are apparently no national tests on which students need to perform in pressurized test-taking atmospheres. Below is an overview of New Zealand student assessment procedures based on the findings of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)  as published in their Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education NEW ZEALAND.

One other idea I would like to note about my own opinion of assessing school age children through a holistic approach relates to the way children are assessed. I feel that the way we assess children in early education programs should be a model for how all learning is assessed. We should be asking teachers to know individual students and to assess their learning (the domains I mentioned above) through observation and collection of evidence- NOT through standardized testing! The focus of rote learning and testing that has swept our nation is not what we should be focusing on. Rather, we need to think outside the traditional box and give students the chance to demonstrate their capacity through hands-on opportunities.

Consequences of Stress on Children's Development

I would have to say that of the list of stressors we chose from this week it was probably chaos that had the biggest effect on me.  My parents divorced when I was quite young and there was always a sense of stress, tension, and animosity between them. My father wasn't absent but he could be unreliable at times. I remember sitting at our front window waiting for my dad to come pick us up for our every other week Sunday visit and there were times he just wouldn't show up. In addition to that my mom was always working or going to school (mostly both) and so my sister and I were shuffled amongst relatives and different babysitters throughout our childhood.

While the shuffling did cause some chaos it also provided for one of the main support systems/assistance which helped us to navigate through the chaos. If you check out my childhood web you will see how much of an effort my mom put into building a strong support system around us. So, even though there was a lot of chaos there was also a lot of love and support from other family members. This is really how we coped as a family with this stressor. I, on the other hand, coped individually in a different way. I formed an extremely strong attachment to my sister. She seemed like the one constant thing, my calm in the storm, and having shared a bedroom she was always right there when I was little. I was a very emotional child and she would help to take my mind off of the craziness by singing and dancing with me or making up silly games to play together. She was my rock!

I researched New Zealand again this week because I have a special interest in this country and how child development occurs there in comparison to the United States. What I found is that I was not able to find as much information as I had expected. I found that poverty is a major stress factor on child development- with poverty rates having doubled between the 1980's and 2014. One of the main ways to minimize harm from poverty is by forming strong attachments between infants and parents and providing nurturing and loving care. There are programs available to help parents to understand how to form these attachments and provide this care.

In 2012 the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty released a report showing evidence for action to reduce poverty in New Zealand's children. Their report recommended several things- agree upon a measuring system to determine levels of poverty and use it, increase Family Tax Credit amounts, and "add a member to the Work and Income Board who has expertise in child well-being and development issues" (Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty, 2012, p. 40). These were short term suggestions that were accompanied by a few others. In the long term some of the ideas were to create a low-income support payment for families with young children, creating a government pass-on law for child support payments in order to create more stability of receipt of these payments, creating pathways for unskilled or under-skilled workers to receive training and education that would lead to stable jobs, and to increase the number of social housing units by 2000 per year until 2020. These are just a few of the suggestions made by the Advisory Group; in total there were 78 specific recommendations.

In 2016, Russell Wills- Children's Commissioner released a document that outlines the progress that was made based on these recommendations during his 5 year term.

Here are a couple of slides that depict some of the changes:

As you can see, 35 of the 78 recommendation were implemented. However, Wills goes on to say there is still a lot to do.  

Resources:

You can find the full report here and the Children's Commissioner's follow-up here

The article about the importance of relationships and attachments can be found at http://www.brainwave.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/Child-Poverty.pdf