A New Professional: The Aims of Education Revisited

In this review, we explore economic imperialism, a concept that captures the phenomenon of a single discipline’s power over so many facets of social life and policy—including education. Through a systematic search, we examine how economic imperialism has been conceptualized and applied across fields. We uncovered three key, interconnected elements of economic imperialism that hold relevance for education research. First, economics has colonized other disciplines, narrowing the lens through which policymakers have designed education reforms. Second, an overreliance on economic rationales for human behavior neglects other explanations. Third, a focus on economic outcomes of education has subjugated other important aims of education. We share implications for researchers to use economic theory in ways that are interdisciplinary but not imperialist.

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Postmodern Test Theory

Teachers College Record ◽

10.1177/016146811411601108 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 116 (11) ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Robert J. Mislevy

Keyword(s):

Research Design ◽

Educational Measurement ◽

Educational Assessment ◽

Test Theory ◽

Learning Sciences ◽

Multiple Perspectives ◽

Model Based ◽

Contemporary View ◽

Aims Of Education ◽

Background Context

Background/Context This article explains the idea of a neopragmatic postmodernist test theory and offers some thoughts about what changing notions concerning the nature of and meanings assigned to knowledge imply for educational assessment, present and future. Purpose Advances in the learning sciences—particularly situative and sociocognitive stances—call into question the adequacy of the trait and behaviorist psychological perspectives under which educational measurement evolved. This article argues nevertheless that its models and methods, appropriately reconceived and extended as necessary, can be useful in assessment framed in a contemporary view of learning. Research Design This is an analytic essay. Conclusions/Recommendations The model-based reasoning that characterizes test theory is useful not because it measures extant traits defined and evidenced in the same way for all students, but because it helps us organize our thinking, marshal and interpret evidence, and communicate our inferences and their grounding to others. A skeptical attitude about models in assessment makes our uses of them more flexible, more powerful, and, ultimately, more effective at meeting and fulfilling the aims of education than they would be if we believed that they accurately captured the totality of the phenomenon. Our understandings of students’ learning and programs’ effects are enriched by multiple perspectives and diverse sources of evidence, some new or previously neglected but others with familiar (albeit reconceived) forms.

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