Intelligence Testing Recommendations - Lab Report Example

Intelligence Testing Recommendations s Psychology Department 18th January In the present conditions of rather high demand for places in our further education institution, admission policy is to be reconsidered and elaborated more carefully in order to ensure high objectivity and better overall performance of our students. To achieve these goals, the practical aspect of admission needs to be complemented with an additional procedure allowing the college admission board to single out the candidates, who will perform the best in our college’s courses. The interview as a part of admission policy is a good criterion and tool for evaluation of a candidate’s abilities, but it might be impossible to identify one’s cognitive and intelligence potential via interview. Thus, I would highly recommend implementation of intelligence testing within the college’s admission policy. Need for intelligence testing As far as our institution provides educational services in various directions including football academy, art courses, BTEC and others, there is the need to develop an elaborate testing strategy for the candidates applying for different majors. The body of psychological researches indicates including Ellis (2013) state, that intelligence testing has been a helpful procedure both for sorting out candidates for special classes and for adjusting curriculum and instructions in accordance to mental abilities and peculiarities of the admitted students. In addition, standard SAT testing is unlikely to be efficient enough for our type of educational institution. Available recognized IQ tests Modern psychology offers numerous testing strategies for intelligence evaluation including mental rotations test (Peters et al, 1995), Stanford-Binet test, Wechsler test, Porteus Maze test and many others. One of the most widely used intelligence test applied today in the U.S. is the Standford-Binet testing strategy developed to evaluate intelligence with help of a single quotient. Wechsler IQ test developed based on Stanford-Binet contains eight subtests and is supposed to evaluate the candidates’ mental abilities and cognitive skills. This test is divided into age categories designed to evaluate intelligence of preschool children, pupils and adults. Its critical difference in comparison to Binet’s approach is emphasis on non-verbal skills, whereas Binet’s test relies much on verbal skills (Kaplan & Saccuzzo, 2010). As far as the candidates we deal with are mainly aged 18 and older, the test category that might be useful for our admission process is Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), developed for adults or older adolescents (Kaufman & Lichtenberger, 2006). Multiple tests for objective evaluation Considering the college’s location in the highly multicultural area, we can conclude the target group of our college includes students and candidates of different cultural backgrounds. Moreover, the direction for further education indicates that mere evaluation of academic skills and grades is not sufficient for effective admission procedure. Therefore, our admission board is to be aware of the fact that success of our students doesn’t depend only on analytical reasoning and knowledge (Sternberg, 2012). As the result, the simple Stanford-Binet IQ test isn’t suitable for our potential students: for example, we are unlikely to identify the abilities of applicant for our art courses through testing of analytical skills and cognitive abilities. In order to obtain the best results, the candidates are to pass a certain number of intelligence tests evaluating their proficiency level, moreover, their psychological profiles can be built based on the results in order to adapt curriculum and find an individual approach for each of them. I would recommend using the core IQ test common for all the courses the candidates apply for, yet the system of intelligence assessment shouldn’t consist of this sole test, instead, this test should be complemented with other types of testing varying for different courses. The core intelligence test to be used is Wechsler Adult Intelligence test, which should be complemented with other auxiliary tests. Testing for multicultural group of applicants The students already studying in our college and applying for admission belong to different ethnic and religious groups and cultures. Considering this, the admission board should focus on the issue of cultural identity and interaction while developing intelligence tests for the candidates. Nowadays, Cultural Intelligence tests (CQ) are used to define the person’s ability to adapt to different cultural environments and interact with representatives of different cultures (Earley, 2002). This test incorporates assessment of four skills: cognition, meta-cognition, behavior and motivation, building up the assessment report based on combination of the four criteria and indicating the level of the candidate’s intercultural performance and adaptation (Livermore, 2009). Cross-cultural competence is an aspect of admission testing procedure, which is to be used as a complementary testing measure together with other types of tests for all courses present in our college. This is likely to contribute to psychological profile of the applicants and identify whether they are able to study successfully in the multicultural environment. Creativity and other specific criteria A set of additional intelligence tests are recommended for admission procedure. Along with other tests, I would recommend using creativity tests for certain directions like art courses, as many researches assert creativity to be a separate concept not implied in the notion of intelligence; moreover, measures of the two concepts are reported to be different (Silvia, 2008). Additional tests are to be identified for each course in accordance with careful study of abilities and skills needed in each area. For instance, Porteus Maze test would be rather suitable for such directions as football academy, as it identifies ability for foresight and psychological planning in individuals of all ages, and these features are rather desirable characteristics of football players along with sport standards. Conclusion The recommendations concerning admission intelligence testing in the current further education college focus on the approach, which will allow the admission board to make decisions more objectively. I would recommend establishing two universal tests aimed at assessment of general intelligence quotient and cultural intelligence. However, the additional intelligence testing methods are to be implemented for different courses (specific ones). The environment our college is located in excludes the possibility of focusing on a single general testing procedure, yet more complex multi-stage testing procedure would be rather practical and efficient. Even though the recommended strategy is likely to impose certain additional tasks on the admission board, it will enable better control of candidates to be admitted and better general performance and success of the college in future. References EARLEY, P. C. (2002) "Redefining interactions across cultures and organizations: moving forward with cultural intelligence". In STAW, B. M. (Ed.) Research in Organizational Behavior 24. R. M. Kramer Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 271–299. ELLIS, J. (2013) Inequalities of Children in Original Endowment: How Intelligence Testing Transformed Early Special Education in a North American City School System. History Of Education Quarterly, 4, p. 401. [Online] Academic OneFile, EBSCOhost. Available from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.adams.idm.oclc.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=8f5803ab-246d-4fef-ad67-8f65416ea449%40sessionmgr4005&vid=0&hid=4103 [Accessed January 18, 2015] KAPLAN, R. M. & SACCUZZO, D. P. (2010) Psychological Testing: Principles, Applications, & Issues (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage learning. KAUFMAN, A. S. & LICHTENBERGER, E. (2006) Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (3rd ed.). Hoboken (NJ): Wiley. p. 3.  LIVERMORE, D. (2009) Leading with Cultural Intelligence. New York: AMACOM. PETERS, M., LAENG, B., LATHAM, K., JACKSON, M., ZAIYOUNA, R. & RICHARDSON, C. (1995) A Redrawn Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotations Test - Different Versions and Factors That Affect Performance. Brain and Cognition, 28, p. 39-58. SILVIA, P. J. (2008) Creativity and Intelligence Revisited: A Latent Variable Analysis of Wallach and Kogan (1965), Creativity Research Journal, 20, 1, pp. 34-39. [Online] Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost. Available from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.adams.idm.oclc.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=0e40e788-cda7-425a-baf7-a4a83124a086%40sessionmgr4001&vid=0&hid=4103 [Accessed January 18, 2015] STERNBERG, R. J. (2012) College Admissions: Beyond Conventional Testing. Change, 44, 5, p. 6. [Online] MasterFILE Premier EBSCOhost. Available from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.adams.idm.oclc.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=0878f682-e77e-42e6-856c-b4552335c04f%40sessionmgr4001&vid=0&hid=4103 [Accessed January 18, 2015] Read More