An extract from a recent essay submitted to Deakin Uni. Imminence_of_e_assessment
Computer-based assessment comes in many forms and is adaptable. Online exams have been observed to have some typical impact on students and teachers. Relief of scarcity of devices is creating an opportunity for computer-based testing. Measures can be taken to minimise cheating on computer based examinations. eAssessment offers good schools opportunities to reform school reports.
What happens to our brains in Year Eight, and is it inevitable?
Judith Baenen
I heard Judith Banaen (Middle Years Schooling Association travelling scholar) at a seminar for parents recently. She vividly described the typical enthusiastic and organised sixth grader; the brain-dead seventh grader; and the paranoid eighth grader.
I have heard parents (particularly home-schoolers) bemoan time wasted in year eight on “disciplinary issues” or classroom management. Many teachers are convinced that the curriculum for the two years, seventh and eighth grade, could easily be delivered in one, if kids were more focused. I have seen students’ frustration over their peers obsession with gossip and grooming.
These phenomenon are international. Baenen attributes this to physiological changes that occur roughly between 10 and 15 years of age, but I see two clues that the impact on schooling is largely socially constructed.
Firstly, if the phenomenon is physiological, it should be distributed over a five year age range. The main stress seems, however, to be concentrated in Year Eight for almost all students.
Secondly, the impact on teaching seems to be less severe in some schools (particularly elite private schools). I suspect that students in a more strongly teacher-driven classroom or cocurricular program spend less of their daylight energy and time on social and emotional development tasks. Presumably, the developmental task is delayed or distended for many students, into later years. Perhaps high achieving senior secondary students are sometimes ‘childish’ because they have put off some of the relational realignment work that others do in eighth grade.
Is this an argument for deschooling, or for stricter schools, or for the status quo?