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Re: [Phys-l] What's the point of teaching to the test when it's graded inaccurately?



As a slight tangent to this (but I'm always up for a good advocatus diaboli argument), I went to a talk a few weeks ago by a researcher who is specializing in finding correlates between measureable (functional MRI, etc.) brain activities and creativity. He got a lot of flak for not being able to quantify (or even define, without oodles of addenda and exceptions) "creativity"; however, he made a damned good case that such things *seem* to be correlated, and may be much more quantifiable in the future. Some very smart people are working on this messy psychological stuff, and many of them really understand statistics, how not to lie with them, and what constitutes "measureability" in such cases.

I'd be willing to bet that at this time ETS can't test (in any convincing way) for "creativity". Probably the same for "empathy", or any of a multitude of floppily-defined things. It seems to me that those sorts of qualities which would (to my mind) require a kind of Turing test are exactly what ETS would fall down on.

--C.O.

/************************************
Down with categorical imperative!
flutzpah@yahoo.com
************************************/




________________________________
From: Brian Whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net>
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 10:59:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] What's the point of teaching to the test when it's graded inaccurately?

Hehe... In certain quarters reading of a physicist calling another
entity arrogant
might elicit kettle..pot comments.
So as an assuredly humble, non-arrogant type myself :-) let me act as
Devil's Advocate:
What personal quality that is in some way observable, can you cite,
that I cannot in turn, conceptualize a test for?

Quist, Oren wrote:
The ETS has a certain arrogance about them that I have never liked. They claim to be able to test for anything. If there is something you would like to determine about someone (or a group), they can come up with a test to find out for sure whether they know it or not. I don't think this can be done for many things!

Oren Q.


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