Welcome to my blog about Assessment in Early childhood education
Assessment is where you gather information about children or students to understand what they can or can't do. When assessing a child you are able to see what the child is interested in, then you are able to build learning experiences around the child to enrich their learning. When assessing you can understand children better and you are able to build stronger relationships with that child (Ditchtelmiller & Ensler, 2004). As teachers we need to be able to find out as much about children as we can. If we are able to find out the child strengths and weaknesses you know how to challenge them through their strengths or help them with their weaknesses (Krause, Bochner, Duchesne, McMaugh, 2007). There are different types of assessment tools that teachers use in early childhood. Some different times of assessment are - "Achievement test, anecdotal record, checklist, event sampling, learning stories, portfolios, rating scale, running record, time sampling, obeservations" (Wortham, 2001, p. 261-264). And many more...
On this website I have completed a series of blogs on Assessment in early childhood education. Throughout this blog you will find different theories connected with assessment that will relate to children in the early childhood centre. I will highlight the key concepts and relate it to terminology connected with assessment. I will consider theories and philosophies such as Behaviorism, Cognitive Views, Steiner, Montessori and Pasifika perspectives. There are many different reasons to why assessment is important in early childhood education and I will share with you why. I will discuss my role as a teacher and the role that the children in centre has towards assessment.