Assessment in Montessori Classrooms (6 hours)
Overview
$90.00
+ tax and shipping
This course will examine assessment, particularly as it affects children in Montessori classrooms. Our primary reference will be the “Montessori Assessment Playbook” by the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector. The price includes a copy of the text. Assignments will be ordered by chapter, referring to the content therein.
“Human flourishing, as Maria Montessori put it, means becoming a person of one’s time and place, with the means and wherewithal not only to function within but to shape society. Standardized tests, at least as they are currently designed, fail to address these crucial capacities and drive schooling experience toward narrower and narrower activities. The learning experience is rendered, at best, decontextualized, instrumental, and joyless, and, at worst, irrelevant and oppressive. At the same time, we are not opposed to assessment. We believe strongly that schools should hold themselves accountable to the children and families they serve. We also believe Montessori is among the most data-centric educational approaches ever invented. Building on that premise, we assert that the best way to serve children and families is for schools to cultivate sustainable systems for assessing their impact using various data sources. We don’t, in other words, accept the premise that the problem with our current educational culture is measurement. On the contrary, we think it’s clear that data, measurement, and vigorous attention to how well we realize our collective mission should drive all school operations. For such a system to be effective, however, we must carefully consider what we measure and how we do it.”
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