Comment: What are the differences between testing intelligence and testing for knowledge? When might each approach be appropriate or innappropriate? Discuss other participants' comments by mentioning them @name.

According to its most basic definition, intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills including the capacity for abstraction, analysis/synthesis, logic, reasoning, etc.. The way I see it, when we test knowledge, we test the facts, information and skills, both theoretical and practical, we have acquired through experience or education – the final product of learning, so to say. When we test intelligence, we test the ability to acquire and make use of the knowledge in familiar and unpredictable settings, thus focusing more on the process of learning. Speaking from my experience, testing both knowledge and intelligence can be appropriate at schools when educators want to determine what students have learned from the instruction that had been provided to them or if they want to understand how to help students become better learners or improve their intelligent application of the knowledge. I may be wrong, but I don’t see intelligence as a purely inborn ability. Although there are biological predispositions to make the development of intelligence easier for some students, I believe there are techniques that can be applied to foster this process for any students.

Make an Upate: Find an example of an intelligence test, and explain how it works. Analyze its strengths and weaknesses as a form of assessment.

In our school we use CAT4 intelligence test for primary schools https://www.gl-assessment.co.uk/assessments/products/cat4-for-primary/ It aims to assess the underlying abilities which are known to make a difference to learning and academic achievement. This test assesses verbal, non-verbal, quantitative and spatial reasoning. Developed in the UK, it is considered to give schools reliable indicators for national tests and examinations.

Strengths:

1. Easy to interpret student reports with a user-friendly interface and advice on how to address the identified weaker areas. This creates opportunities for more personalised learning based.

2. Used for students with limited English proficiency to ensure the lack of language skills doesn’t cloud the assessment of cognitive abilities. The assessment of the verbal area can, on the other hand, determine academic needs of students whose General English is well developed but is not sufficient to tackle the school curriculum.

3. Support team available to troubleshoot and provide further guidance on how to interpret the results.

Weaknesses:

1. Certain cultural bias as the test is created specifically for the UK educational system. Although, attempts have been made to make the test universal, I have seen samples of tasks and felt that occasionally some of our Chinese/Thai students would not be able to relate to the context fully.
2. It’s not cheap which may be a deterrent for some schools.