INTRODUCTION
Many
scholars have argued whether examination is a true test of knowledge,
personally I feel that examination is more of a feedback mechanism that
confirms that a learner understands to a limit what a teacher or an instructor
teaches; therefore passing an exam is a matter of getting prepared.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
Knowledge: facts,
information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education;
the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
Test: a
procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of
something, especially before it is taken into widespread use.
ARE
EXAMINATIONS ALWAYS A TRUE TEST OF ABILITY KNOWLEDGE?
No,
because of test design.
The
true term to ask for “validity” specifically “predictive validity”. Validity
means how true a test is to the quality it is measured.
Let’s
say I have a test to measure vocabulary. The scorer who scores high on vocabulary
should have a higher vocabulary than one tested at mid-range or on the low-end.
“Predictive
Validity” means how much does a test I take today present something in the
future.
.
Second, paper and pencil tests can
never be as accurate as real life. I do not know of a single test that can
measure how a person can deal with all the many challenges life holds (illness
and death of people you care about, how well you manage money, etc.).
There have been plenty of examples of
how even people from Harvard, Oxford, etc. cannot do what many more common
people seem to do, such as being a good friend and family member, being
on-time, understanding situations and other people, etc.
Because different teachers examine
their papers differently. They tried to give more marks to the weak students
and sometimes less marks to the best students. Knowledge of the teacher is also
a factor
INTELLIGENCE CANNOT BE DEFINED BY EXAMS
We lose too many talented people by defining intelligence through exams that are wholly inadequate and constricting, says headmaster Peter Tait
“Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many
people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is
separate from the way the car is driven.” - Edward de Bono
Each year at this time, the pressure cranks up in the race
for school and university places, as SATS and A-levels prepare to feed another
raft of league tables. As these help determine our standing on the world stage,
through the Programme for International Student Assessment our obsession with
measuring children takes centre stage.
Confident in our system of public examinations, that is
broadly designed to separate those more ‘intelligent’ from the less
‘intelligent’, we can feel content that we are filtering out our most able for
higher education and all the opportunities that entails. Sounds simple enough,
if it was really that easy.
The problem lies with the word intelligence. The common
definition, that of possessing ‘a quickness of understanding and an ability to
apply knowledge and skills to a high level’ – should give us pause to ask how
well equipped our current examination system is to deliver?
Many ‘intelligent’ students, so identified by the data
emanating from various intelligence tests (which incidentally too often
reinforce teacher expectations), are frustrated by papers that trot out the
same questions in a different garb. These allow for little or no original
thought and even actively discourage creative thinking and intelligent
responses.
Simply stated, measuring intelligence through examination is,
inevitably, as limited as the examination itself. Whilst it might prove a
reasonable sieve – perhaps even the best we can provide – it will not identify
many of those we instinctively know to be intelligent.
There are simple reasons for this, apart from the failure of
examinations to measure divergent thinking and creativity (due in part to the
need to keep marking as objective and, therefore, as inflexible as possible to
remove any room for subjective judgment).
The problem of measuring intelligence per se is that it is an
inadequate guide to human capability, and that many of the ways we use to
measure working intelligence are woefully inadequate. Surely those we should be
seeking to identify and nurture are students with the capacity of effective or
applied intelligence, those who can do something with what knowledge and skills
they acquire?
Too many ‘intelligent’ children, often bored by conventional
learning, slip through the net. Others just think differently to the
straitjacket dictated by ‘one size fits all’ exams. For instance, the list of
those luminaries with learning difficulties who found it difficult to express
themselves in conventional examinations makes for sober reading.
This poses the question as to just how many are badly served
by traditional examinations, despite all the assistance offered through extra
time, reader-writers and the use of technology. We only have to reflect on some
of our leading public figures who dropped out of school and have ended up in
prominent positions in public life to know that the traditional system of
assessment was not capable of measuring their particular abilities, their sense
of purpose, work ethic and creativity.
There are also many ‘intelligent’ people, as measured by our
schools, who have the historic indicators of intelligence, viz. a quickness of
understanding and the ability to perform cognitively at a higher level but are
painfully deficient in other aspects.
These people can lack initiative, the ability to ask
difficult questions (and solve them), EQ, cooperative and communication skills
and the organisational discipline crucial to make intelligence an active,
rather than a passive, trait.
Because our perceived definition of intelligence is so
closely linked in with an ability to be measured by exams, many intelligent
people are disfranchised.
Our measure of who is intelligent depends more on giving
expected and appropriate answers rather than showing any initiative or creative
spark, this is probably the reason for the clutch of third class degrees
accumulated by such luminaries as Michael Morpurgo, W. H. Auden and Carol
Vorderman.
By measuring intelligence this way, we get some of the crop,
but not all, and those that fall by the wayside can be the most important of
all. Hence while neurosurgeons, judges and nanotechnologists emerge from the
current system, one only has to look at the vast numbers of highly successful –
and intelligent – people who failed to shine at school to see how random our
measure is. As Winston Churchill aptly demonstrated, it is possible to win the
Nobel Prize for Literature despite a mediocre school career and no tertiary
qualifications.
Part of the problem may be how we value and reward
intelligence, as identified through traditional testing. The word ’intelligent’
has a cache that other words, like ‘industrious’ do not. For instance, we
richly reward those whose appointments are based on their academic
qualifications; judges, diplomats, bankers and brokers, financiers,
consultants, senior bureaucrats and the like. However, those people who make
create, who tinker and take intellectual risks, are scantily rewarded in
comparison.
e might well ask, are our schools guilty of promoting a
passive form of intelligence, asking ‘what do you know’ rather than ‘what can
you do’ simply because of the limitations of assessment? We might also pause to
recognise that many ‘intelligent’ people may lack the very qualities we need
from our leaders, be it emotional intelligence, wisdom or even common sense.
Ability, talent, intelligence on their own are lumps of coal – they need
setting alight to have any value.
Of course we need our most able to fly; we need an
intelligentsia to keep challenging us and leading us forward. And they will
probably still come from the traditional route until we widen our criteria and
improve our tools for identifying talent, although when I read that 7 per cent
of Oxford’s student population are receiving counselling along with postgraduate students, I wonder how too much
focus on academia can stunt emotional and social development. As a society, we
benefit most from those with effective intelligence, who are able to channel
their intelligence and use it, rather than merely parade it in the safety of
institutions and selected professions.
EXAM RESULTS DON'T DETERMINE SUCCESS IN LIFE
The over-emphasis on exam results leads to a “pressure cooker environment” with students finding it difficult to cope, says Rod Bristow
The week directly after the half term break represents the
peak of the annual exam season – an important time in many families’ lives as
millions of students up and down the UK will be sitting their GCSE or A level
exams.
But the recent debate about exam-induced stress reflects a legitimate
concern for students, their families and for everyone involved in education.
With children of my own not long finished their A levels, I
do understand how nerve-wracking this time can be. What's more, my job is to
lead one of the UK's leading assessment organisations - Pearson is
responsible for setting and marking around a quarter of all the GCSEs and
A-levels taken each year in England and Wales.
Exams are important and they always will be. Good, demanding
qualifications open doors to higher study and to fulfilling lives - so of
course we back the government’s drive to raise standards and encourage
success in them.
But, broader, deeper learning rather than exam results in
isolation, should be the goal. That's why the government has already acted to
address over-testing through removing the
January assessment
and tackling the culture of early entry to GCSEs.
Nevertheless, in recent years, exams have been given such a
significance that they are in danger of undermining the very thing they are
designed to encourage - a high quality broad based education that prepares
people for life.
That over-emphasis leads to a “pressure cooker environment”
with students finding it difficult to cope with the extraordinary levels of
stress associated with taking exams. Sometimes parents also contribute to
this stress, albeit with the best of intention.
Qualifications are a good proxy for the knowledge and skills
that young people need. We should think of them as stepping-stones to a
bright and successful future for those who achieve them. But they do not, and
will never, completely define the sum total of what a good education ought to
provide.
Nor are they a binary predictor that someone will succeed or
fail in life; ambition and aspiration backed by hard work are better predictors
of success in life than any single result on one exam on one day.
I know this too, as an employer. Resilience, creativity,
ethical values and an ability to work effectively with others, are also
vital outcomes of a rounded education; they enable success in life, not only
the work place.
Of course exams are an important hurdle to get over. But, odd
as it may sound, the best way to do that may be to see them for what they
are; a good indication of your knowledge at one point in time, rather than the
final word.
CONCLUSION
Yes it is true that examination is not a true test of
knowledge and for this reason we lose too many talented and intelligent people
by defining intelligence through tests that are wholly inadequate and
constricting. We need to look wider and encourage the entrepreneur, the
inquisitive, the creative and the downright cussed in our schools to make the
most of who we are and to bring out the richness and diversity of thought and
ideas in our society.
REFERENCES
Becker, G. S. (1993, June). The Economic Way
of Looking at Behavior. The Journal of Political Economy, 101(3),
5.
Cultural Bias in Standardized Testing. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://culturalbiasinstandardizedtesting.weebly.com/what-is-cultural-bias-in-standardized-test.html
Curtis, C. (2013, January 30). How
Psychometric Tests are Developing and Why You Can't Do it Yourself.
Retrieved from onetest:
http://www.onetest.com.au/home/blog/how-psychometric-tests-are-developed Michael
Morpurgo, W. H. Auden and Carol Vorderman.
Iquite agree with you totally. It cannot measure intuition, imagination and the ability of an individual to improve overtime. This is why Finland adopted a primary school education system deemphasizing or almost entirely illuminating examination and proved successful!
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