Page 202 - DEDU504_EDUCATIONAL_MEASUREMENT_AND_EVALUATION_ENGLISH

Educational Measurement and Evaluation

Notes 16.3 Psychological Factors

The various psychological factors are as follows:-
• Anxiety : Some children “freeze” in a testing situation. They are unable to focus or
concentrate long enough to give a true picture of their actual knowledge in a subject area.
This is especially true when parents are stressed about the test, and have pressured him to
do well.
• Physical Health : A child may be coming down with the flu, have a headache, a sore throat,
or be overtired. He may have slept in, missed breakfast and be hungry. All of these can
affect test performance.
• Emotional Health : The student may be upset because parents are in the midst of separation
or divorce proceedings. A close relative may be seriously ill. He may be witness to an
ongoing abusive relationship at home. He may be excited and distracted because of an
upcoming holiday, a birthday or a sleepover.
• Cultural Differences : Children who come from a different culture may have a problem
understanding the content of questions or situations appearing in the tests. For example.
Jewish or Muslim children might have trouble understanding questions centering on
Christmas or Easter.
• Economic Differences : Children coming from homes where money is scarce will be
disadvantaged in may ways. As well as lacking proper nourishment, they may never have
been to a farm, a zoo or a circus. Any reference to these or other sites familiar to most of the
students, will puzzle them and negatively affect their scores.
• Parental Attitudes : Children to whom parents have read since infancy, whose homes are
scattered with books and papers, and whose parents enjoy reading themselves, have a huge
advantage over those whose homes which contain no reading materia. Children whose
parents are supportive and interested in their children’s education will do better than the
children of those who show little interest in their progress at school.
• Classroom Situation : If the classroom is crowded, if it contains several children with learning
or behavioral disabilities, with no aid to help, if the teacher has changed one or more times
during the year, the students will not score as well on a standardized test. Learning must be
incremental, discipline must be consistent, and those having difficulty should have a little
one-on-one attention from the teacher.
There are many factors which can influence the scores of standardized tests. Competent teachers
realize this, and they also know their children and their strengths and weaknesses well. They
will take all factors into account before deciding on a report card mark. or a placement for the
following term. The standardized test is only one tool in teacher’s stockpile of evaluation.

16.4 Environmental Factors

Neurobiological theory tells us that the development of a humans various forms of intelligence
usually ends by the age of 16, when a criticial point is reaches. After this point of intellectual
maturity, IQ is thought to be relatively stable. The environment has its biggest affect in
determining someone’s fluid intelligence up and till the critical point. Fluid Intelligence is
someone’s ability to think logically in verbal and spatial terms and detect patterns too.
For a person to develop certain intellectual abilities, they need to be provided with the appropriate
environmental stimuli during childhood, before the critical period for adapting their neuronal
connections ends. It should be mentioned that some researchers believe that the critical period
effect is a result of the manner by which intellectual abilities are acquired—that changes in
neuronal connections inhibit or prevent possible future changes which may explain differences
in Intelligence types between people of different cultures.

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