- Considering a commitment to viewing young children holistically (i.e., a commitment to "the whole child"), what, if anything, do you believe should be measured or assessed? Explain your reasoning.
- In what ways are school-age children assessed in other parts of the world? (Choose a country or region of the world for which you have a personal affinity.)
- What additional ideas, comments, suggestions, examples, and/or concerns related to assessing young children would you like to share with your colleagues?
The development of a child, extends far beyond the physicial aspect of the child. Development is inclusive of emotions, cognitive, language, mental, social aspects. When we consider viewing a child holistically, we must view the child from all areas of life. This is also should include biological aspects.
The child is first made up of many biologically components. Which we can consider as genetics, some have stated, the makeup of genes, behaviors, etc comes from the DNA of our ancestors. So we can not factor out biology when we are considering the whole child. When assessing and measuring a child, we often see behaviors that come from the nuturing aspects ( how they are raised) and the nature aspect ( the world around them). The question often remains, which has the greatest influence.
I believe we must focus on every aspect of a child, especially the biological makeup and the enviroment of the child. We can not meausre children as a whole based on age development, because of the many outliers that often exist among children in the same age group. When measuring children, it would be fair to incorporate the stress factors that can inhibit development, as well as the positive factors that promote development. Children have many components to their development, especially in relation to cognitive and lanaguage development. Thus looking at one area to determine how well the child is developing may place limitation and bias on meausring and assessing the whole child.
In other parts of the world, particularly the Netherlands, children are assessed in 6 dimensions: Children material well-being (focusing on the income level of the child family and deprivation), health and safety (survival and overall health), educational well-being (school achievements and knowing the basics), relationships (emotional and psychological development), behaviors and risk (social problems), and subjective well being (family affluencey. The children are assessed in all of these areas and provide a score. These are taken among children in rich countries. The Netherlands provided the best score in relation to assessing children and children have a good well being. Most of these children had positive factors that attributed to their wellbeing.
After, reading the article regarding the well being of children, I beleive this is a great way to assess children, especially to see how they are developing. In the U.S a child is mainly assessed academically. This is often through standardize test but does not factor in difference that occur between children. I greatly believe children should be assessed like this just as they are assessed medically.
Berger, K. S. (2016). The developing person through childhood (7th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers
UNICEF, Child poverty in perspective:
An overview of child well-being in rich countries,
Innocenti Report Card 7, 2007
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence
http://www.unicef.org/media/files/ChildPovertyReport.pdf
