I understand if there are obvious signs of a disability such as Downs Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy but on a whole I am not sure if an assessment is needed. Unless that assessment is going to be used by the teacher to guide his or her lessons. Which most are not unless the child fails.
In completing this assignment I looked up assessment in Africa and I came across an assessment used in the country of Malawi. This portion of the assessment is used to determine cognitive growth. I found this interesting because the article states that they developed an assessment tool based on their own culture.
In developing countries, poverty, poor health, and malnutrition are responsible for millions of children failing to reach their developmental potential. But because developmental assessment tools have mainly been designed and validated in western, developed countries, they contain many items that are alien to children in non-western cultures (for example, the use of knives and forks for eating and the use of specific gestures). They cannot, therefore, accurately assess whether a child living in, for example, a rural area of Africa, is developing normally. In this study, the researchers describe the creation and testing of a culturally appropriate developmental assessment tool for use in rural Africa—the Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool (MDAT)—from a 162-item draft tool (MDAT Draft I) that they previously developed from Denver II, an assessment tool widely used in developed countries.
The Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool (MDAT): The Creation, Validation, and Reliability of a Tool to Assess Child Development in Rural African Settings http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000273
Example of assessment.
Everything seems to be now based on an assessment of some sorts. However, we as educators know that sometimes children are labeled disabled and classified in school and it has an adverse effect on the child. So I have to honest I am not sure if all assessments are appropriated.
