The ongoing discussion of the definition of intelligence and how to measure it continues with a recent article in Education Week.

 

Robert J. Sternberg is a nationally known psychologist who has spent much of his career designing new measures that might more accurately capture the full range of students’ intellectual potential. He believes that conventional assessments measure only a narrow subset—memory and analytical skills—and do not necessarily measure all the abilities students need to succeed in life, namely a combination of practical, creative, and analytical skills.

 

While traditional assessments are frequently good predictors of success, plenty of people succeed without ever fitting that pattern—people like Virgin Airlines founder Richard Branson or filmmaker Steven Spielberg, both of whom were high school dropouts.

 

A team of Yale University researchers is taking Sternberg’s ideas and rethinking tests that schools use to identify students for gifted and talented programs. Dubbed Aurora Battery for the colorful spectrums created by the northern and southern lights, the assessment is being translated and tested with tens of thousands of students between 9 and 12 in the United States, England, India, Kuwait, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and other countries. Aurora is a comprehensive battery that includes a group-administered paper-and-pencil test, a parent interview, a scale for teacher rating of students, and some observation items.

 

With the Aurora assessments, scholars hope to get a read on the skills that make the Bransons and Spielbergs of the world successful, as well as the academic skills that intelligence tests have traditionally measured.

 

The new assessment could yield a very different pool of gifted students—one that includes a higher proportion of those from traditionally underrepresented minority groups. It also has the potential to capture a population of students with a more varied and better-qualified array of skills.