AlterEdu – Opening the spectrum of intelligence
How an alternative model to IQ-tests or traditional analytical assessments could revolutionize the way the world looks at intelligence
~ Tanika Kenens
Abstract
AlterEdu is a new social cognitive testing model which defines multiple intelligences on the basis of information processing mechanisms. In contrast to most conventional IQ-tests, AlterEdu deploys thirty-four variables leading to extraordinarily fine-grained group identifications, thus enabling bespoke learning and training trajectories. Currently AlterEdu is deployed in the field of language learning and learning difficulties. We outline the assumptions and structure of the model, the testing instrument and highlight its unique qualities in view of formal and informal learning in a knowledge economy.
Keywords: AlterEdu, language learning, testing, learning difficulties, cognitive testing, IQ
Introduction
IQ-tests are a necessity in an increasingly knowledge-driven society in which both economic and socio-cultural life places high demands in terms of people’s cognitive strategies, learning capability and processing capacity. The current and most widely used IQ-tests, however, yield exclusionary effects due to a lack of precision in the testing instruments and the limited scope of the instruments and their categorial outcomes, which leads to people becoming categorially disqualified, a loss of potential and a lopsided social imagination of what intelligence entails. Contemporary society needs a more precise and realistic imagination of what intelligence is.
AlterEdu is a new social cognitive testing model aimed at including individuals and groups frequently excluded in the presently deployed IQ-tests by means of a fully developed testing instrument targeting far more, and more specific, forms of capability, all of them valuable for lifelong learning trajectories and adjusted to the rapidly changing learning environments and learning demands of contemporary society.
In what follows, we outline the biological pillars the model is based on (section 1). Next we elaborate on the basic premises behind the model (section 2) to then turn to the question typology deployed in AlterEdu (section 3). From there, we will need to consider the issues related to factor analysis and latent variables (section 4). In our conclusion, the main principles and advantages of AlterEdu will be highlighted once more.