Facts for FACS Teachers

The Shift Toward Intelligent Intelligence Testing
Marsha Markle, M.A., M.A., Ed.S.

Standardized intelligence testing, now nearly one-hundred years old, has been a mainstay in educational assessment for placement in both special education and gifted programs. Intelligence testing attempts to quantify a student’s academic potential, an educated guess as to how well a pupil will be expected to do in school. A significant difference between that expectation and actual achievement, at either extreme, may signal the need for intervention.

Often, students are given intelligence tests as part if the IEP (Individualized Education Plan) process. The IEP document defines a student’s disability and how they will receive their education. Test results and input from the IEP team are important factors for implementing an effective plan for students. The portion of the assessment that describes intellectual strengths and weaknesses should also include information on how students learn and how they are challenged. This kind of information furthers your ability to develop any needed accommodations or modifications for individual programming.

A single entity view of intelligence (called “g”) has been the most influential conceptualization since the start of I.Q. testing in school settings. Most of the criticism of using a single number to describe someone’s potential centers on the misconception that people are born with an unchangeable intellectual potential that determines their success. While well-trained assessors no longer subscribe to that idea, its popularity has not declined.

If intelligence is not a single, static, innate construct, what is it? How should it be measured? What does it mean to educators? Since the early ’70s, intelligence researchers have been trying to address such questions while continuing to use intelligence tests to help make educational decisions. In addition, both neuropsychological tests and brain imaging have had an impact on new intelligence theories. The newer theories all agree that the traditional I.Q. tests failed to capture the essence of intelligence.

Some of the new approaches propose either more factors, such as Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, or different factors that contribute to intelligence, such as Jack Naglieri’s PASS Theory (Planning, Attention, Successive, and Simultaneous processing), Robert Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory ( analytic, creative, practical factors), and David Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. While these theories are fascinating, they are not often used in school settings.

Despite this, however, educational intelligence testing has made a shift in recent years. Even the predominant traditional I.Q. test, The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), has a fourth edition published just last year that reflects changes. The recent revisions provide four clusters of learning potential, rather than two that were previously emphasized. While a full scale score is still available, a single score is discouraged, especially if the four factors provide a more complex picture of a student’s skills. The most significant change in the WISC is the shift in what used to be called “Freedom from Distractibility;” readers of test results often mistakenly concluded that students who performed poorly on “Freedom from Distractibility” were deficient in attention. Research has advanced the theory of attention to a much greater sophistication. Wechsler now refers to a similar set of subtests as “Working Memory,” eliminating the confusion over attention or distractibility. In addition, the WISC includes a variety of new subtests similar to those found in neuropsychological assessments of cognitive abilities. Other intelligence tests have also included neuropsychological subtests and include The Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities-III and The NEPSY.

What does this major shift in intelligence testing mean to you? It should mean that assessors will be able to provide educators with a multidimensional picture of a student’s learning strengths and weaknesses. It also means you could find out how a student learns from different kinds of input and how their learning may be negatively impacted. The assessor may provide you with instructional strategies that leverage student strengths and minimize student challenges. You could learn how the student processes input and how the student can best demonstrate what was learned.

Psychologists are broadening the concept of intelligence and how to assess it. Students and teachers will be the beneficiaries. Practitioners are no longer satisfied to measure a general (“g”) intelligence factor. They want to use tests that help them design interventions that improve students’ access to their education. As brain imaging and neuropsychological assessment practices continue to influence testing intelligence in schools, educators will increasingly be able to respond more effectively to learning differences among students.