Children's Quotes

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today. Stacia Tauscher

While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about. Angela Schwindt

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
William Stafford

Testing for Intelligence

Assessing the mind of a child is a difficult, if not impossible task. There are so many factors that impact the learning and development of an individual, and each individual is so unique that it is extremely difficult to find an assessment that will measure all with the same precision. While we can use the information from the assessments to compare what one child can do on an assessment compared to her peers, the difference in learning styles from this individual compared to the "norm" may be very different. So, do these results really tell us what this child can or cannot do, or does is simply tell us that this child needs to do it differently? In order to understand a child in a holistic approach, we need to look at all aspects of a child including intelligence, achievement, and social-emotional. It would also be necessary to look into the medical history of a child along with their environment. Even with this full battery of assessments, we may still not understand the true ability of a child. However, we will get a good understanding of how the child performs compared to where society expects the "norm" to perform.

Upon researching other parts of the world, and assessments used, I found a website by the University of New South Whales. This website is set up for schools from 20 different countries to use their assessment tools in each of the core areas of Math, English, Science, Writing, Spelling, and Computer Skills. This site then offers to report all of the assessment data for each of the different schools to use in determining how their students are doing compared to other students in each of the other countries. This is very similar to what we do in the United States when we compare what we do in our state compared to what other states do. However, all of these countries are using the exact same assessments while each state tends to have their own standardized tests.

While many parts of the world are using different assessment tools to "understand" the mind of a child, each of these tools are simply used to compare individual children compared to society's "norm". These assessment tools are useful and important in order for us to see the abilities of children, and, maybe more importantly, the growth of a child. However, these tools do not necessarily help us to understand the mind of a child, regardless of what part of the world you live in.

Resource:

UNSW Global. The University of New South Wales. Retrieved from http://etc.unsw.edu.au/about_icas