When I Think of Child Development

Do not train children to learn by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. –Plato

Testing for Intelligence

When it comes to viewing the whole child, I think that authentic assessment should be used. According to the text, "Authentic assessment (also called classroom assessment, alternative assessment, and performance-based assessment). This type of assessment occurs in the ongoing life and daily activities of the early childhood classroom. Authentic assessment is evaluation of a child's development or performance in the context of everyday life. In a natural or "authentic" approach, the teacher observes and documents real life examples in which skills and knowledge are demonstrated tasks that are meaningful to the child. It is not a onetime event. Instead it is an ongoing process. It uses the input of teacher, parent, and child. Authentic assessment includes multiple kinds of information, collected throughout the day, while children are engaged in a range of activities including self-selected play, teacher-directed activities, routines, and transitions. In authentic assessment a variety of methods are used to record or document what children do, but the most important is teacher's observations of children engaged in meaningful activities. Photographs, videotapes and audio recordings, interviews with children and family members, and examples of children's work also can provide authentic evidence of a child's understanding and ability" (Feeney, Moravcik, Nolte, Christensen, 2010).

In England, at the moment, "most of the children start school in nursery or reception classes at the age of three or four and are taught using the Early Years Foundation Stage, a compulsory "nappy curriculum". They are assessed against targets set out in the EYFS, which covers areas such as personal and social development, communication and early numeracy, before moving on to formal lessons in the first full year of school aged five. Children are then subjected to further assessments in the three R's at the age of seven" (Paton, 2013).

I think that when we assess children, we should make sure that whatever we assess them with it should be developmentally and educationally significant for children. We should make sure that the instruments we assess them with have goals that are aligned with early learning standards, program goals, and curriculum rather than a narrow set of skills.


Feeney, S., Moravcik, E., Nolte, S., Christensen, D. (2010). Who Am I in the Lives of Children? An Introduction to Early Childhood Education. Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Paton, G. (2013). The Telegraph. Retrieved December 7, 2013, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk