Annual Conference On Educational Measurements PDF Download

Excerpt from Eighth Annual Conference on Educational Measurements: Held at Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind;, Friday and Saturday, April 22 and 23, 1921 I want to speak tonight on the topic I am most interested in methods of teaching. The title, "Contributions of Measurements to Methods of Teaching", gives me the chance to discuss an idea about measurement work that some of us have had from the beginning, altho this point of view has not always been understood by some of the teachers who have used our tests. As I see it, tests are a means of controlling methods of teaching. They are of no value except to the teacher who uses the results intelligently. I want to try to show you tonight in various ways how the use of tests has contributed to the building up of a knowledge of the proper ways of teaching, and how, as we work with tests in the different fields, we are constructing a perfectly definite philosophy of teaching which is enabling us to do better and better work. I am going to begin with a definition of education in order that we may start with the same basic ideas. This is the definition of education which I like best: Education is a process of helping children to change themselves from where they are toward where we think they ought to be. I like that definition for many reasons. First, I like to emphasize the fact that teaching is a process in which a number of different people have to cooperate. Education is not a matter of taking a course here and there. It is something more than that. What you can accomplish is determined in large measure by what was done by those who came before you, while what you do will determine in part the success or failure of those who come after you. Cooperation is essential to success. Then education ought to be a process of helping children. That puts the emphasis where it belongs. Children must change themselves; the teacher cannot do it for them. It is the teacher's place to help the children change themselves. Now the children are going to change themselves from where they are. The only kind of teaching that counts is that in which we begin to work with the child where he is. We are going to change him from where he is toward the place where we think he ought to be. The tests help us to measure where the children are; and when we know where the children are and where they ought to be, the tests can help us to decide whether a new method is an improvement over the one we have had. The definition is of value because it enables us to show clearly the functions of measurements. They are: (1) the definition of goals; (2) the description of children; 3 the determination of the efficiency of different methods. With the aid of measurements we have been defining the goal of education. For instance, in the case of handwriting, measurement has helped us to define the goal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.