Evaluation

The Traditionalists

Traditionalists accept knowledge traditionally handed down as some version of the truth about a situation. For educational leaders this would include the measurement generation and the descriptive generation. Educators became interested in measuring achievement, measuring intelligence, measuring aptitudes, and so on preceding and following World War I. Historically, we can view the information from the starting point of the 1880s. This is when Francis Galton, in London, administered tests to hundreds of persons to test sensory reactions and reaction times of volunteers. This was the genesis of intelligence quotient (IQ) testing. In addition, Galton's work has been identified with the eugenics movement. Similarly, in the early 1900s, Alfred Binet and his colleagues in [Page 365]France developed the first intelligence test, which actually was designed to find and identify mentally defective students, as they were called. The focus was again on deficiency, like Galton's work. It was then that psychologists were writing about the possibility of measuring the mind, and the era was seen as one of excitement and possibility. Binet always clarified the fact that he did not believe one single score was the measure of intelligence. He openly wrote of the possibility of error in testing. At this same time in New York City, Edward Thorndike was devising tests, called standard scales, to measure students' performance in reading and mathematics. Later, all school subjects were to be tested. Schools adopted these tests because they were efficient and convenient, for one thing. Remember that our factories and industries were moving toward mass production and efficiency. The schools reflected society in the rush to adopt testing of students. Then with the advent of World War I, psychologists created tests for the U.S. Army that sorted out recruits for particular tasks. This was one of the great influences on schools in terms of efficiency testing.

Schools adopted the prevailing tests. The notion of testing became situated firmly in the pattern of schooling at all levels. Many teachers continued to use teacher-made tests. Yet testing was now fixed and firm as a traditional approach to measuring. For the evaluator, the role was seen essentially as one who measures. Similarly, the descriptive generational approach is basically a traditionalist posture as it looked at testing as a type of measurement and saw the weakness as perhaps being too efficient and as missing fairness. Descriptive generation evaluators tried to refine the practice of evaluation by formulating objectives and goals. Thus they added to the traditionalist perspective and at the same time paved the way to the reconceptualist approach to evaluation. They were in effect looking for patterns in testing, and basically the role of the evaluator was the role of describer.

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