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13 - Learning Potential Assessment: Where Is the Paradigm Shift?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2009

By
Alex Kozulin
Edited by
David B. Pillemer  and
Sheldon H. White
Alex Kozulin
Affiliation:
International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential: Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
David B. Pillemer
Affiliation:
University of New Hampshire
Sheldon H. White
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Learning potential assessment (LPA) is only slightly younger than intelligence testing itself. In the early 1930s Lev Vygotsky (1934/1986) in Russia and Andre Rey (1934) in Switzerland made clear statements in favor of LPA procedures. As shown in recent reviews (Lidz, 1987; Weidl, Guthke, and Wigenfeld, 1995) even the period between the 1940s and the 1960s that appeared to be totally dominated by the psychometric approach had its share of LPA attempts. Finally in the 1960s, on the wave of widespread dissatisfaction with the existent psychometric intelligence tests, LPA approaches became operationalized (Budoff and Friedman, 1964; Feuerstein and Shalom, 1968) and started forming a field of their own (Campbell and Carlson, 1995; Kozulin and Falik, 1995). Yet at the beginning of the 21st century, 70 years since its theoretical inception and 30 years since its operationalization, LPA still remains a rather marginal form of assessment as compared to the dominant psychometric IQ approach. In terms of Kuhn's (1970) theory of scientific revolutions, the paradigm shift failed to take place. In this chapter, I will attempt to answer the question of why to the present time the LPA paradigm has not succeeded in dislodging the psychometric paradigm.

The Concept of LPA

Since its inception in the work of Binet and Simon, the concept of intelligence testing was closely connected to the task of evaluating the learning abilities of children and adults.

Type
Chapter
Information
Developmental Psychology and Social Change
Research, History and Policy
 , pp. 352 - 367
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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