Introduction
A Way of Knowing – Positivism
Rebecca Caufman
George Mason University
Introduction
Introducing My Opposite
When I was a senior in high school and filling out my college applications, little did I know the impacts my college choice and what I wrote on the application would have on my thinking. On each application I was asked to provide the top three majors that I would like to study. Upon the strong encouragement of my parents, I wrote down elementary education as my top choice, knowing that I could change this decision at a later time if I chose to.
Since I wanted to go to an out-of-state school, I was ecstatic when I received an acceptance letter from Virginia Tech. In the acceptance letter it stated that not only had I been accepted into Virginia Tech, but I had also been accepted into the College of Human Resources to study Human Development with a concentration in Early Childhood Education, which was what I indicated as my first choice major.
Upon arriving on campus, I learned that I was one of only fifty students in my major and that my entire four years were, for the most part, mapped out for me. I began freshman year taking human development classes, along with the freshman core curriculum. For the next four years, Virginia Tech began the process of changing how I viewed education – everything from how I was taught to how they wanted me to teach. Through this process I learned to look at students with a developmental lens. I was shown how to view each student as an individual and how to plan lessons to support individual differences.
My Master’s degree at Virginia Tech in Curriculum and Instruction, with a concentration in Reading, served to deepen my developmental view. Through my readings, I began to take on the thinking of Lucy Calkins and her workshop approach to language arts instruction. I even went to the Teacher’s College in New York for two summers to learn more about this style of teaching, direct from the founders. In teaching both reading and writing in workshop settings, celebrating students as individuals becomes even more important as each student works with the teacher in creating and learning about their writing and their reading preferences.
My lens of viewing students as individuals was only narrowed further by my training to be a Reading Recovery Teacher. This is a one-on-one intervention program for struggling first graders. Through this training I learned how to plan distinct lessons for each individual child based on their strengths.
These educational avenues I have traveled through have taught me the importance of getting to know each one of my students as individuals. Learning each of their likes and dislikes helps me to best teach lessons that will both interest and engage them. Through this learning process, I also get to know each student’s academic strengths and weaknesses, which I can then use to help me prepare lessons and to provide scaffolding in order to progress their thinking further.
Through this Ways of Knowing class at George Mason this semester, I have learned that my way of knowing is most aligned with the narrative view. In this view, stories and storytelling are the primary sources of knowledge and knowledge transfer. Research under this view is often labeled as being qualitative research. Through this type of research, the researcher learns the whys behind a certain phenomenon direct from the source. On the opposite end of the spectrum is quantitative research. This research focuses on gathering data and analyzing the data, which is often converted to numbers. The researcher then uses these numbers to help make generalizations in order to explain a phenomenon. This is quantitative analysis is the work of a positivist, my opposite view.
Positivism
Theses of Positivism
In the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Abbagnano (1967) defines the characteristics of Positivism:
The characteristic theses of positivism are that science is the only valid knowledge and facts the only possible objects of knowledge; that philosophy does not possess a method different from science; and that the task of philosophy is to find the general principles common to all the sciences and to use these principles as guides to human conduct and as the basis of social organization. Positivism, consequently, denies the existence or intelligibility of forces or substances that go beyond facts and the laws ascertained by science. It opposes any kind of metaphysics and, in general, any procedure of investigation that is not reducible to scientific method. (p. 414)
The History of Positivism
Although Francis Bacon began the thinking behind positivism way back in the 1600s, the literature points to Auguste Comte, a French philosopher, as its founder. Comte lived some 200 years after Bacon, but he used his empiricist thoughts to help bring about a new way of thinking. Through positivism Comte hoped to, “…replace the ‘brainpower approach’ of rationalism by leveraging the principles of the natural sciences (such as Physics, Chemistry, and Biology)” (Positivism, 2008). Comte described his views of positivism in, Cours de philosophie positive (1830-1842) (Turner, 1993). In this work he describes how, “…the history of the human mind can be divided into three successive ‘states’ (or stages). These can be trace through every branch of knowledge” (Kolakowski, 1968, p.54). Comte labeled the first stage theological, and in this stage man attributes events to supernatural forces using faith and customs as explanations. The second stage is titled metaphysical, and here man uses abstract forces to be the explanation for observable phenomena, which is often seen in the work of philosophers. The last stage is called the positive stage, and in this stage man hopes to discover laws by observation and reasoning (Abbagnano, 1967; Columbia Encyclopedia, 2007; Positivism, 2008). Positivism is said to have born in this last stage, which is also referred to as the scientific stage. Comte believed that one must progress through each of the stages in order.
While positivistic thought is said to have begun in the 1830s with Comte’s work, many forms of positivism have spun off of this original philosophy (Ballantyne, 2002). Comte’s own positivism is said to be a form of social positivism. A social positivist works to promote, “…a more just social organization” (Abbagnano, 1967, p.415). In fact, besides being the founder of positivism, Comte is also credited with being the founder of sociology, a term which he created. Comte believed that sociology could be a natural science through which testable abstract laws and principles could be developed in order to understand the dynamics of the social universe (Turner, 1993).
Other important social positivists of the nineteenth century include Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, who studied in England. Like Comte they believed, “…that every kind of valid knowledge be included with science” (Abbagnano, 1967, p. 415). Bentham and Mill worked to develop a science of the mind based on facts through the study of motives for human conduct (Abbagnano, 1967). Social positivist thinking was continued when James Mill’s son, John Stuart Mill, contributed to this form of positivism by making a correction to Comte’s view of science in his 1843 publication System of Logic.
Another form of positivism is known as evolutionary positivism. This form, “…shares the faith in progress of social positivism but justified it in a different way” (Abbagnano, p. 416). It is based on nature, not society, from the fields of physics and biology. The first contributor to this line of positivism was Herbert Spencer. Spencer believed that, “the universe was a result of evolution” (The philosophy of positivism, 2008). Another important figure under this study of positivism is Wilhelm Wundt. He is credited for being one of the founders of psychology, along with William James (Wilhelm Wundt, 2008).
Psychometrics
Why Move on to Psychometrics?
As a teacher, I often come in contact with the results of positivism in the form of standardized tests. These tests strip my students of their stories and assign numbers to them so that they may be grouped and compared to others of their age. I often have a hard time accepting these numbers as a result of my human development background and my strong bias to view my students as individuals rather than compare them as part of a group. As a result, I chose in this paper to study the form of positivism and psychology called psychometrics. Standardized tests are created through this field of study, and by learning more about it I hope to understand more about the foundation and reasoning behind these tests. I began my research by discovering what the word psychometrics meant, and I found it literally means, “…measuring the soul” (Kline, 2000, p.1).
History of Psychometrics
Psychometrics is a branch of psychology. When looked up in the American Heritage Dictionary (2000), psychology is defined as, “the science that deals with mental process and behavior.” If the beginning psychologist could be here today, they would be celebrating the inclusion of “science” in the definition of their field. Prior to the early 1800s, “…philosophers stated unequivocally that psychology could never be a science. The activities and the contents of the mind could not be measured, and therefore an objectivity such as that achieved in physics and chemistry was out of reach. Psychology would forever remain subjective!” (Boeree, 2000). Ernst Weber began to change this thinking when he founded Weber’s Law, which was the first law that related a physical stimulus with a mental experience (Boeree, 2000). Gustav Fechner built upon Weber’s Law by creating a mathematical expression for it. Together these two men showed the world, “…that psychological events are in fact tied to measurable physical events in a systematic way, which everyone had thought impossible. Psychology could be a science after all!” (Boeree, 2000). The next breakthrough in psychology becoming a science was made by two men, Sir Francis Galton and Alfred Binet. These two men are credited for creating the first measurements of intelligence.
Sir Francis Galton is often cited as being the founder of modern psychometrics. His studies in the mid to late 1800s include inquiry into the heredity of intelligence, studying scientists to discover the nature and nurturing of intelligence and comparing twins to investigate the nature vs. nurture phenomenon. Another important study of Galton’s was his 1879 study of free association in which he assessed participants’ reaction to a list of 75 words. In this study he recorded the rate, frequency, and character of associations formed (The history of psychometrics: the study of the human mind, 2008). Galton is also cited has inventing correlation, scatter plots, and regression toward the mean (Boeree, 2000).
The second man, Alfred Binet, made a major breakthrough in psychology in 1905 by co-creating the first modern intelligence test called the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence (Boeree, 2000). This test came about when he and Theodore Simon, “…were commissioned by the French Government to study retardation in the French schools, and to create a test to differentiate normal from retarded children” (Boeree, 2000). Surprisingly, even though it is considered the first modern intelligence test, Binet did not intend his test to be used to measure intelligence; instead he created it in order to classify individuals as the French government had asked (Alfred Binet, 2008).
The Binet-Simon Scale consisted of thirty, “…tasks that they thought were representative of typical children’s abilities at various ages” (Plucker, 2007). These tasks increased in difficulty throughout the test. “They tested their measurement on a sample of fifty children, ten children per five age groups” (Plucker, 2007). The children chosen for this first testing sample were identified by their teachers as being average for their age (Plucker, 2007). The test scores were used to determine the educational placement of a child by revealing the child’s mental age (Plucker, 2007).
In my readings of Binet, I found it interesting to learn of the often hidden history behind his work. Not only did he not intend this first test to be an intelligence test, he also believed intelligence was a very complex topic. In fact, he didn’t like it when William Stern created a number for IQ in 1911. Binet, “…cautioned that his test should be used with restraint…He was afraid that IQ would prejudice teachers and parents, and that people would tend to view it as fixed and prematurely give up on kids who score low early on” (Boeree, 2000). You see, Binet believed that intelligence was not fixed, but instead he thought it could be impacted by the environment. Binet also realized the limitations of his scale and, “…he stressed the remarkable diversity of intelligence and the subsequent need to study it using the qualitative as opposed to quantitative measures” (Plucker, 2007). With this in mind, it is somewhat alarming what the United States has done with the Binet - Simon Scale after it was translated from French to English.
Binet’s test was translated by H. H. Goddard in 1908, and he used the test, just as Binet had feared, as a way to show the superiority of the white race (Plucker, 2007). Lewis Terman then took the Simon-Binet Scale and standardized it using a large American sample in 1916. With this new sampling came a new name and a new purpose for the test. The name was changed to the Stanford-Binet Scale. Terman used the name of the university he worked at as inspiration for the new title. Like H.H. Goddard, Terman was a eugenicist, and he used the findings from his new test to help curtail, “…the reproduction of feeblemindedness” (Plucker, 2007). Ever since this translation of the Simon-Binet Scale in 1916, the development of standardized tests has experienced rapid growth, which lead to the creation of a new field of psychology - psychometrics.
The Study of Psychometrics
According to Kline (2000), “…there are three aspects to psychometrics: the development of statistical methods, the application of psychometric tests…and the development of quantitative psychological theory (p. 6-7). While someone in the field of psychometrics may be involved in all three of these aspects, it is more common for them to choose one of the aspects to explore.
A psychologist who designs tests that make an attempt to measure human characteristics is called a psychometrician (The History of Psychometrics: the study of the human mind, 2008). A person wishing to be a psychometrician needs to have a strong knowledge of both statistics and mathematics. For this reason, “…it is the resort of a minority of specialists” (Kline, 2000, p.5). One of the main difficulties that psychometricians face is that, “…it is not a simple matter to measure psychological variables” (Kline, 2000, p.5). In fact, Kline (2000) describes the work of improving and developing statistical methods needed to produce good tests as being, “…painstaking research” (p.5).
In Psychometrics: an Introduction (2008), a test is defined as, “…a standardized procedure for sampling behavior and describing it using scores or categories.” Psychometricians have created a variety of tests to measure human characteristics. The three most developed types of tests are those that measure intelligence, ability, and personality. As discussed earlier, the intelligence test is what started it all. By administering this test one would hope to learn a person’s general reasoning ability. These tests are most often used in educational psychology and for job selection. Kline (2000) comments, “Of all the different kinds of psychometric tests, intelligence tests are the most effective and valid” (p.1-2). While the intelligence test is used to measure a person in a general sense, the ability test hopes to measure a person in a more specialized manner. The goal of administering an ability test to someone is to determine their specific strengths, or perhaps their weaknesses. The final common test, the personality test, is defined in psychometrics as representing, “…the total of all variables, other than those of ability, on which individuals differ” (Kline, 2000, p.2). Through administering personality tests, pyschometricians hope “…to discover and study the most important variables giving rise to such differences in personality” (Kline, 2000, p.2). Of course, psychometrics is not limited to the development of these three types of trait tests, they also work to develop tests of states. These tests include those that measure motivation, mood, attitude, creativity, and interests, just to name a few.
Since psychometrics is based on psychological testing, a major concern of the field is the development good psychological tests. Qualities of a good tests include, “…high reliability, high validity, and high discriminatory power. In addition it possesses extensive norms” (Kline, 2000, p.24). In order to understand this way of knowing, one must be familiar with many quantitative research terms. Below is a list of some of the important terms in the field of psychometrics. Please note that these are just a few of the basic terms that psychometricians use in their daily work. In creating this list, I focused mainly on those terms that are used in creating good tests:
|Term |Description |
|Correlation Coefficient |This score is used to measure test reliability (Kline, 2000, p.25) |
|Criterion Referenced |The object is to see if the subject can attain some pre-specified criterion |
| |(Psychometrics: an introduction, 2008) |
|Discriminatory Power |The ability of a test to produce differences in its subjects |
|Internal Consistency Reliability |The extend to which each item is measuring the same variable on a test (Kline, |
| |2000, p. 28) |
|Mean |Average group of scores; knowing the mean is useful to help summarize the |
| |performance of a group on a test (Kline, 2000, p.24) |
|Norms |A set of scores from specific groups of subjects (Kline, 2000, p.39); they |
| |allow comparisons to be made between individuals and between groups (Kline, |
| |1979, p.1) |
|Percentiles |The score below which a given proportion of the normative group falls (Kline, |
| |2000, p.41) |
|Reliability |Measuring something consistently (Psychometrics, 2008) |
|Standard Deviation |To find this number one must take the square root of the variance, and it |
| |reflects the amount of variation in the set of scores (Kline, 2000, p.24) |
|Standard Scores |The deviation from the mean divided by the standard deviation of the test; |
| |usually used for comparison (Kline, 2000, p.25) |
|T Scores |Standard scores with means of 50 and standard deviations of 10, which have been|
| |normalized (Kline, 2000, p.41) |
|Test-Retest Reliability |Refers to the stability of test scores over time (Kline, 2000, p. 26) |
|Validity |A test is valid if it measures what it claims to measure (Kline, 2000, p.30) |
|Variance |Describes the variations within a set of scores; it is measured in terms of |
| |deviations from the mean. For a psychometric test, the larger the variance the |
| |better the test is considered to be since psychometrics studies individual |
| |differences (Kline, 2000, p.24) |
Kline (2000) argues that, “the aim of psychometrics: to provide precise measurement of psychological variables as a basis for scientific psychology” (p. 4). In other words, it is the job of the psychometricians to ensure that psychology keeps the word “science” in its definition and remains separate from a social science. However, no matter how hard psychometrics tries to align itself with the natural sciences, because of their subject matter, they are distinctly different in how they apply the scientific method. When Kline (2000) compared scientific and psychological measurements, he found that psychological measurements, “…resembles scientific measurements in no particular other than that both types are numerical” (p. 15). As a result, a major assumption that psychometricians make is that their psychometric tests are in fact scientific. A second assumption that psychometricians make is that they can indeed apply a single number to complex psychological phenomenon, such as knowledge, abilities, and attitudes. This leads to a final assumption, which is that the knowledge that is gained through administering tests in a scientific manner results in certain knowledge.
So what is the appeal to this positivist way of knowing? To begin with, the results from administering standardized tests allow testers to compare a large group of people quickly and easily. Once the hard work of creating the tests is finished, one will find that standardized tests are easy to administer, easy to grade, and fairly quick to give. Because the test is created and scored by an outsider, they are also considered to be objective. A final appeal of standardized tests is that the results can be used as a basis to implement change. Perhaps this is why Kline (2000) found that, “…the majority of psychometricians are interested in the practical applications of psychometrics” (p. 5).
The three main branches of applied psychometrics are: educational psychology, occupational psychology, and clinical psychology (Kline, 2000). An educational psychologist will often administer diagnostic tests or intelligence tests in order to help explain the progress or lack of progress of a student. An occupational psychologist helps people to select a career or to develop their career and uses tests to help them do both. The final branch of applied psychometrics is clinical psychology. In this branch tests are given in order to, “…diagnosis and monitor treatment” (Kline, 2000, p. 6).
Conclusion
An Important Lesson I Have Learned
While my preferred way of knowing continues to be narrative, I now have a better appreciation for the positivist aspects of my job. Through writing this paper, I have come to understand more about the reasoning for and goals of standardized testing. This paper has also taught me an important lesson about positivism, which I hope to take with me as I progress in my doctorate degree.
As a Reading Recovery teacher, there are indeed standardized tests that I must administer and that I rely upon the results of in order to effectively do my job. In Reading Recovery, the Observational Survey is used to determine which students will qualify for services. The Observational Survey consists of five subtests, and the scores are converted to stanine scores to aid in comparison. At the beginning of each year school year, there is a two week testing period to administer these tests to first graders. It is during this time that I get to take on the role of a true positivist, and in fact, I enjoy the data collecting and analyzing. I have always had a very easy time administering these tests to students and interpreting the results to determine who should or should not qualify for the program. My problem with this positivist process comes at the conclusion of each student’s program when all five tests must now be re-administered to measure progress. So, why do I find it so easy to be a positivist at the beginning of the year and so difficult at the end?
My problem in administering the test the second time is that now I have gotten to know each student as an individual with an individual story. Once these stories and the children become known, testing objectively becomes much more difficult. This is why Reading Recovery requires that another Reading Recover Teacher administer the final set of tests to your student. When these tests come back, it can often be an exhilarating or a depressing day. Twenty weeks of working one-on-one with a child is boiled down to how well they do on a set of tests. With the results in, there is no room to explain, complain, or question. What is done is done – the numbers tell the story, and I am left voiceless.
Through this exploration of the positivist view, I have been able to weed out the differences between why I can so easily be a positivist in the beginning of the year and why I find it so difficult in January during our second round of testing. It all comes down to knowing the person you are testing. I think it is important for all positivists to remember that they are indeed testing individuals, and while the data provided through standardized testing can be useful, it they should not be viewed as the whole story of the individual. I hope that as I progress through my doctoral program I keep this lesson with me, as I may find myself becoming further and further away from the individuals and closer to the research side of education.
References
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Rust, J. & Golombok, S. (1989). Modern psychometrics: the science of psychological assessment. London: Routledge.
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The philosophy of positivism. In Center for Applied Philosophy: The Radical Academy, n.d. Retrieved April 26, 2008, from
Turner, J. (1993). Classical sociological theory: a positivist’s perspective. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers.
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Young, K. (2005). Standardized testing. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from
Excellent paper, Rebecca. You got underneath this perspective, learned a little about it that will be useful to you in the coming semesters, and still used it to keep a focus on your preferred way of knowing. As I noted above, perhaps you can revolutionize post-assessment in Reading Recovery through your own research.
A.
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