Roberts-Holmes, GP; (2017) Democratic alternatives to early assessment. In: Beyond the Exam Factory Alternatives to High-Stakes Testing. (pp. 42-53). Russell Press Ltd: Nottingham,UK.

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Abstract

The Reggio Emilia schools continue to demonstrate that that there are alternatives to the current hegemonic utilitarian approach towards (early childhood) education. They were established by Loris Malaguzzi as an historical and contextually situated response to Mussolini’s fascism and the horrors of the second world war. The innovative, visionary and democratic Reggio Emilia schools were premised upon Malaguzzi’s political and ethical understanding that education should primarily be concerned with creating the democratic conditions in which children can become critical, creative and independent thinkers. Malaguzzi articulated a culturally ‘rich’ image of the child necessary for such an emancipatory education: ‘it is our moral duty to credit children, all children, with resources, possibilities and capacities that are much greater and much more universal than believed…and as the bearers of rights, values and competencies’ (Malaguzzi, cited in Cagliari, Castagnetti, Giudici, Rinaldi, Vecchi and Moss, 2016, p.377). This understanding of the competent, sociable and democratic child (and teacher) with rights enables the complex narrative assessment known as pedagogical documentation. At its heart pedagocical documentation is concerned with making learning processes and project work visible, and then subjecting them to democratic deliberation about meaning (potentially including not only teachers, but parents, other citizens and children themselves). Such democratic deliberation demands copious quantities of time, institutional support and an openness to joy, awe and the unexpected; not qualities much in evidence today. It tunes in to what the child is interested in and activities that show what they can do. It is open to each child's unpredictability and diversity of potential. Today Malaguzzi’s inspirational ideas are widely known and pedagogical documentation has become widespread, well beyond Reggio Emilia. Secondly, and in stark contrast, Malaguzzi described the ways in which a negative, demeaning and disrespectful image constructed ‘poor’ (limited, inadequate and incompetent) children. Such children could be de-contextualised, categorized and regulated. They were ‘indistinct children without qualities who stay where you put them and you can describe them as you wish, without gender or role or history’ (Malaguzzi, opt. cit., p.376). All this can be achieved through the simplistic measurement of a basic utilitarian audit style approach such as Reception Baseline Assessment (DfE, 2014). Bradbury and Roberts-Holmes (2016) reported the widespread and serious misgivings regarding baseline assessment and in particular the inaccurate and potentially damaging algorithmic predictive profiling of children from age 4 to age 11 (Wriggley, 2016). Elsewhere, Bradbury and RobertsHolmes (2017) argue that Reception Baseline assessment was primarily concerned with the further regulation, governance and datafication of children, teachers and early education.

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