Professional Philosophy

Assessments are essential tools when looking into the development of young children. Educators
and other professionals, who work with young children, use assessments to determine how to teach and
enhance a child skills or to indicate if a child needs to have an early intervention for certain disabilities.
Therefore, there are many types of assessments that help educators and other professional plan and decide
the best course of action for a child. Furthermore, the assessment will be used throughout my career as an
educator because assessments will allow me to indicate what I need to focus on and understand how
children learn the material. Assessments is a necessity when working with young children because one
needs to observe a child before making lesson plans for a child; therefore, by assessing young children
will benefit everyone through an educational journey.
As I am working towards a career as an educator, there are numerous assessments I have learned
about that will be used throughout my career. Also, there are few types of assessments that I had the
opportunity to use with children, which are checklists, anecdotes, COR Advantage, and PQA. Many of
these assessments are consider as Curriculum-based assessments (CBA), which are criterion-reference
assessments that test children on skills that will allow teachers to come up with objectives and lesson
plans for the children to meet certain goals (Losardo and Syverson, p.19, 2011). Therefore, after using
theses assessment tools, I was able to understand what the children need to learn and how the children
learn, so I could plan more effective ways to teach the children a new skill or lesson and set objectives.
Also, I also used a mixture of qualitative, which are assessments that are descriptive, and quantitative,
which collects data just to see if the child shows a certain skill, assessment methods (Losardo and
Syverson, p.34, 2011). For instance, I often use the checklist, so I could see if a child has a skill or not,
which will allow me to take this information to plan the lesson to improve or enhance the skill. On the
other hand, I used anecdotal records to catch special moments that the child has, which indicate if a child
has certain skill and how child express they have a certain skill. Once I collected anecdotes, I will score it
in COR Advantage, which will allow me to see the child's level at a certain skill. Also, this semester, the

classroom I am doing HDFS 424 was chosen to be evaluated by PQA, which is an assessment of the
classroom, adult-child interactions, and overall environment of the classroom. Although, I have not
received the results of this assessments, it was experienced that made me think about the things I could
work on to make the classroom better. Furthermore, all these assessments can reflect back to my beliefs in
the ways children learn and develop throughout their life. For instance, I believe children learn and
develop when they have a positive environment, adult-child interactions, peer interactions, and are taught
in a meaningful way, which will allow a child to learn in a comfortable environment. Therefore, when
looking into how a child develops and learns observation and assessments are very important because
they both play an important role in understanding a childs learning style and building a plan that will
allow a child to be successful.
Also, assessments can benefit teacher, other professionals, and children because it is a tool that
can be used to understand children learning styles, which will allow the child to be able to develop and
learn skills in an effective way. Children benefit from assessments because assessments help the teacher
make plans for children to learn new skills; therefore, children will not be bored with material or skills
that may have already grasped. Teachers benefit from assessments because they can assess their children
and see what they need to focus on, so they can make a lesson plan to help the children develop skills in a
meaningful way. Although, assessments are needed when working with children, there are different risks
that can affect the consideration of the result of the assessment. For instance, if an assessment is not
sensitive to all childrens learning styles that will have to take the assessment, then it could affect the way
child succeed in the assessment. However, assessments are needed to help children learn and develop.
Assessments are beneficial to everyone that has involvement in a childs education; therefore,
assessments should be used as a tool to help children learn and develop in an efficient and meaningful
way.

References
Losardo, A., & Syverson, A.N. (2011). Alternative Approach to Assessing Young Children, 2nd Edition.
Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing Co.