Though this symposium on the advisability of psychological tests in education was originally planned to have two pro and two con speakers, the unforeseen absence of two participants (including the convener) made the debate among the speakers less heated. In fact, the first three speakers directly concerned with the topic were uniformly critical of psychological, and especially norm-referenced, tests.
Kubota (Miyagi College of Education) criticized standardized tests for two reasons. First, those situations used in the tests are often far removed from real life. Secondly, these tests rarely guide us in teaching individual children, because they regard peculiarities of the children merely as “errors” or randum fluctuation. We have to develop specific measuring procedures in order to learn about learning in the child, instead of depending upon some standardized procedures, he asserted.
Hatano (Dokkyo University) was also critical of “psychometric” standardized tests. He distinguished two types of instructional differentiation-administrator-centeredv s. learner centered. In the former, only those who have high potentialities are seen as justifying educational “investment” and given a well-developed education, while those not as well endowed are made to do with less. Learner-centered differentiation seeks to realize as much as possible the potentialities of every student. According to Hatano, psychometric (norm-referenced) tests are of service only for the first type of differentiation.
Yamashita (Ibaragi University) pointed out that standardized or norm-referenced tests, assuming normal distribution of abilities and giving scores according to the relative position in the group against which tests are standardized, necessarily create “inferiors” as well as “superiors”. Testing in education should aim at describing how an individual child responds at a given time and how he has developed (or failed to develop) through intervention. He asserted that professional authorization of these tests would be harmful because this would rationalize poor educational enviroments for the “inferiors”.
Kashiwagi (Japan National Railroads), exclusively dealing with tests in industry, admitted that achievement tests are widely and effectively used in in industry. He proposed, in order to make inevitable selections with consensus between employers and employees, as well as among employees themselves, to introduce recent progress of test theory into actual practice.
Though no strong counter-arguments advocating the use of standardized tests in education were raised, we should expect continuing controversy on this topic. Some psychologists on the floor emphasized the necessity of combining these ethical considerations with empirical research, e.g., how information obtained through psychological tests can be utilized for individual learners in the optimization of instruction
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