EARLY BRAIN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Technologically sophisticated tools such as high resolution ultrasound recordings,magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET) scan, and brain electrobiology chemistry and analysis capabilities have facilitated precise study of the brain's development and functioning.
this research reveals that the human brains becomes ''wired'' , at an astounding rate during the early months and years of the development , and is dependent on specific types of experiences during certain developmental time periods (or ''windows of opportunity'').
The point to be made here is that acknowledging this early critical development means rethinking the type, quality, and timing of earliest experiences, and acknowledging that the earliest experiences have implications for life long outcomes.
LEARNING THEORY, LEARNING STYLES, AND COGNITIVE TYPES
One familiar theory suggest that environment, emotional, sociological, physical, and psychological stimuli affect the learner's success in learning, 1987; dunn, 1996).
For instance, nuances in the physical environment associated with the learner preference and performance include visual characteristics such as the amount and type of lighting-soft, natural, or bright lighting, or color and aesthetic features of the classroom decor that can range from visually ''busy'' tactile characteristics as altered through the use of rugs, cushions, soft seating, and other textural elements,
Learning theory also addresses cognitive styles in which children are described as visual, auditory, or tactile/kinesthetic learners, benefiting best from instruction that provides appropriate sensory input.
Multiple intelligence theory (MI) addresses at least eight types of intelligences and suggests that teaching strategies must respect individual student proclivities if all students are given the chance to succeed in school.
Authentic assessment strategies help the teachers to identify children who need a different approach so that curriculum's and classroom social, physical, and temporal environment can be adjusted.Authentic assessment teachers focus the individual characteristics of each child and to have good and suitable assessment and strategies for the child,to have assurance that every child will gain knowledge and able to learn.
IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL AND MORAL COMPETENCE
AN IMPORTANT GOAL OF EDUCATION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE SOCIALLY AND MORALLY COMPETENT, WHO CAN FUNCTION AFFECTIVELY IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY.THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DYNAMICS OF THE GROUP OR CLASSROOM DETERMINE THE TYPES OF EXPERIENCES IN WHICH HAVE THAT EITHER ENHANCE OR ENHANCE OR IMPEDE THIS DEVELOPMENT.THE MANNER IN WHICH RULES ARE ESTABLISHED AND MAINTAINED, THE EXPECTATION AND EMULATION OF MUTUAL RESPECT, AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHILDREN TO REFLECT ON APPROPRIATE AND INAPPROPRIATE INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS DETERMINE THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE CLASSROOM SUPPORTS THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL AND MORAL COMPETENCE.
THIS APPROACH IS AUTHORITATIVE, ALONG THE LINES OF THAT DESCRIBED BY BAUMRIND (1972) IN HER WELL KNOWN RESEARCH AND DELINEATION OF PARENTING STYLES (AUTHORITATIVE, AUTHORITARIAN, OR PERMISSIVE), AND IS CONSTRUCTIVE IN THAT IT BOTH ELICITS COGNITIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GUIDES CHILDREN TOWARD SELF-DIRECTED PRO-SOCIAL DECISION MAKING.
SOCIOPOLITICAL INFLUENCES ON ASSESSMENT PRACTICES
In addition to prevailing developmental theories and new insights derived from emerging child development and education research, assessment practices respond to a variety of sociopolitical influences.
chapter 1: Auntentic assessment : An emerging paradigm
Your school progress was not only evaluated through tests and report cards,but you might have been intruduce to the conceptpf portfolio edevelopment to showcase your work.
the area of brain development research and its implication for assessment practices. Provides information on the “standards movement” and how these standards can have either a negative or positive impact on developmental goals. Adds a developmental continuum as an appendix to help teachers focus on emerging development rather than on perceived deficits in children. Provides an added chapter on portfolio systems. Places more emphasis on the discussions of diversity and inclusion. For educators and school administrators.
The first example concerns a recent controversy surrounding the use of national literacy benchmarks for primary school learners. Analysis of the issues suggests that some learner groups may be disadvantaged by the practice of reporting aggregate outcomes in terms of minimum standards, but that government policy is unlikely to change as long as the accountability function of assessment remains paramount in the public eye.
NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL GOALS
In 1989, then -president George bush convened the nation's governors in an education summit Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, to hammer out national education goals. As a result of this summit meeting the National Governors Association set forth goals in 1990 for improving education in the United States.
Goal 2. School completion
Goal 3. Student Achievement and Citizenship
Goal 4. Teacher Education and Professional Development
Goal 5. Mathematics and science
Goal 6. Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning
Goal 7. Safe, Disciplined, and Alcohol-and Drug-free Schools
Goal 8. Parental Participation
This goal has become known as the ''readiness goal'' and defined by the National Task Force on school Readiness and the National Association of state Boards of Education (1991)
The National Education Goals (NEGs) were amended in December 2004 to include the reference to physical activity in clause 5. The National Administration Guidelines (NAGs) were also amended.
Declaration of Basic State Policy and Objectives
Toward this end, the government shall ensure, within the context of a free and democratic system, maximum contribution of the educational system to the attainment of the following national developmental goals:
1. To achieve and maintain an accelerating rate of economic development and social progress;
2. To ensure the maximum participation of all the people in the attainment and enjoyment of the benefits of such growth; and
3. To achieve and strengthen national unity and consciousness and preserve, develop and promote desirable cultural, moral and spiritual values in a changing world.
The State shall promote the right of every individual to relevant quality education, regardless of sex, age, creed, socio-economic status, physical and mental conditions, racial or ethnic origin, political or other affiliation. The State shall therefore promote and maintain equality of access to education as well as the enjoyment of the benefits of education by all its citizens.
THE SCHOOL READINESS GOAL
- All disadvantages and children with disabilities will have access to high quality and development appropriate preschool programs that help prepare children for scool.
- Every parent in america will be a child;s firts teacher and devote time each day to helping his or her preschool child learn; parents will have access training and support they need.
- Children will recieve the nutrition and health care needed to arrive at school with healthy minds and bodies and the number of low-birth weight babies will be significantly reduced through enhanced prenatal health system.
The school reform movement and the Education Summit of 1989 also precipitated a movement toward standards-based and assessments.the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and people.....we have , in effect been commiting an act of unthinking unilitateral educational disarmament.
CONCERNS ASSOCIATED WITH WIDESPREAD USE OF STANDARDIZED TESTS
Some drawbacks to steady use of multiple-choice tests have been outlined by Wiggins.
the following are some of his concerns:
- Because of the generic nature of the test, alllignment with instructional aims is virtually impossible.
- Students are deprived of opportunities to deal with other forms of task and questions.
- Students reciece an ''anti-intellectual '' message that suggests that the expected answers to test questions are important than are opportunities to chalenge and be challenged, or to justify their own answers.
- when tests are administerd at the end of the year, results can have no impact on teaxhing and learning; the feedback is too late to be useful.
- When students merely select from multiple choices, there is no way to know what atudents are able to do or how they will use the knowledge that is being tested.
- When students are compared with the normative group, children who fall below the norm on a standerdized test are a t the distinct disadvantagesas their differences are often exaggerated by the manner in which tests are normed to begin with.
Concerns regarding large scale, high stakes testing of students become increasingly troublesome when such testing is mandated in early childhood classroom.Too often the limeted content of the test becomes the content of the curriculum,which is often characterized by rote memorization activities, paper-and pencil task, and skill-anddrill review'' accompaniedby pressures from both teachers and parents for children to learn conent skills more appropriate for older children.
CONCERNS ASSOCIATED WITH RETENTION PRACTICES
Frequenly, children who are retained are place in a between-grade class,referred to variously as ''transition class'',''developmental palcement'',''junior kindergarten'',''junior first grade''.and so on.
Summarizing the main points pf these and other studies, we find that:
- Children gain little, if any, academic benifit from being retained.
- retention either produces no difference or causes some harm to socialemotional outcomes for children.
- A high proportion of children retained one or more years later drop out of high school.
- Retention decisions are often biased, as children most likely to be retained are boys with summer bethdays, children phsically small for their age, and children of minority groups.
- more developmentally appropriate practeices and less formal, didactic instruction with young children is more promising for all children.
The law basically provides for three groups:
- children who have a measurable adevelopment delay in one or more of the following ares: cognitive, physical, language/communication, social,emotional, or adaptive of self-help behaviors
- children who have a diagnosed physical or mental condition that could result in a developmental delay(e.g., Down syndrome, multiple sclerosis)
- at-risk children who must experience early intervention to prevent a developmental delay.
Our quest for authentic assessment can be based on assumtions relating to serveral aspects of the education process:
- early childhood education (birth through age eight),
- learning,
- knowledge
- teaching
- assessment , all of which are delineated in the following lists.
- Young children have an innate need to know and, therefore, are competent, eager to learn, and trustworthy learners.
- Within a supportive and enriched setting, young children can initiate and direct their own learnings.
- young children construck knowledge while interacting with adults, one another, and with meaningful materials and realia.
- Young children develop physically,emotionally, and intellectually at different rates.
- the first eight years are critical ones development.
- Learning proceeds from the concrete to the abstract through (1) active exploration and inquiry, (2) enriched learnings environments, (3) social contexts that encourage interaction among learners, and (4) adult ab order child scaffolding.
- The mind must be engaged if learning is to occur.
- Ther are different intelligences involved in learning:linguistics,logical-matyhematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic (Garner, 1983).
- all learning has its foundations in early childhood.
- Knowledge is rooted in the language, and customs of different cultures.
- different kinds of knowledge exist: physical, logical-mathimatical, and social-conventional (Piaget, 1952).
- Both proc\ducts and processes are important ti the acquisition of knowledge.
- Problem solving supersedes rote memory of facts if knowledge is to be meaningful and sustained.
- comparing assessment results across populations is of little value.
- Authentic assessment is not reflection of inherent capacities, but of emerging capabilities and the individual's onteractions with the environment.
- Aunthentic assessment is rooted in scientific evidence from the developmental cognitive, and neural sciences.
- aunthentic assessment in contesx provides valid information about the learner and the educative process.
- Authentic assessment considers difference intelligences, diverse learning styles,and varying contextx in which learning occurs and reflects our best understanding of human variability.
- authentic assessment rooted knowledge of child growth and the development can make valid predictions of later performance.
- Qualitative forms os assessment can provide objective and reliable data about the learner.
- Developmentally appropriate assessments are derived from developmentally appropriate curricula and vice-versa.
- Authentic assessment provides opportuniyies for both the learner and rhe teacher to reflect on goals and ways to achieve them.
Chyle Gohetia
Junniel Eusebio
