Revisiting Ideas of Assessment through the Work of Alfred Binet

Abstract

This paper examines the work of Alfred Binet, best known for the invention of the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) scale with respect to his ideas on the assessment of various attributes of children. This exploration is anchored in an analysis of his final work ‘Modern Ideas of Children’, published in 1911 and which was a review of thirty years of his own experimental work in this area. His understanding of ‘modernity’ in the field of pedagogical sciences was tied to a faith in the application of the scientific method (systematic observation, measurement and experimentation) to reveal the ‘real’ nature of human beings. This is reflected in his consistent engagement with the question of what aspects of a child's being are measurable and under what conditions. In his perspective the teacher had to play a critical role in the assessment of a student's potential and his work was an attempt to demonstrate how the teacher could use the scientific method within the context of the classroom to improve his or her pedagogy. Equipped with the right diagnostic tools and methods, he envisioned the teacher as playing an important role in ameliorating social problems such as poverty. These insights continue to be relevant a century after the first publication of Binet's work.