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of a specific type of testing infrastructure. This late-modern approach to testing is
relatively isolated from research about learning, emphasizing the use of tests as sort-
ing mechanisms, and neglecting the use of tests as educative aids. More recently, in
the USA in particular, this approach to testing has been wedded to sweeping edu-
cational policies mandating specific high-stakes uses, which has put testing at the
center of many debates about schooling. This heightened awareness leads us to sug-
gest that now is the time to ask foundational questions about what today's tests
measure and how they are used.
In the second section, we begin a response to these foundational questions, sug-
gesting that a testing infrastructure based on research into the nature of learning will
be better able to meet the challenges facing educational systems in the twenty-first
century. Arguments from a variety sources propose that the new science of learning
should be at the heart of efforts to redesign testing infrastructures. Moreover, given
the rapidly changing conditions to which educational institutions must respond, the
values that shape test reform efforts should transcend outdated dichotomies about
the function of testing and the purposes of education—moving beyond unproductive
either/or commitments: either tests as sorting mechanisms or tests as educative aids;
either tests of competencies or tests of content; either tests to train the work force
or tests to foster reflective citizens. Tests should be based on research about how
students learn and guided by explicit commitments to reshaping schools in positive
new directions.
In the third and fourth sections, we outline our approach to test development,
wherein new computer-based tools are wedded to advances in psychometrics and
cognitive developmental psychology, thus bringing the new science of learning to
bear in the design of a broad and flexible testing infrastructure that is both stan-
dardized and formative. For decades research in cognitive development has focused
on the diverse learning sequences that characterize the acquisition of knowledge,
capabilities, or skills. Recently, in the wake of Fischer's Dynamic Skill Theory ,
a common or general scale has been built, which can be used to research and
understand development and learning along an almost endless variety of different
learning sequences. The Lectical TM Assessment System is a psychometrically refined
measure of this general scale, allowing for reliable and valid assessments of student
performance and the concomitant construction of empirically grounded learning
sequences. The DiscoTest TM Initiative embodies our general approach to test design,
which combines this approach to researching and measuring learning—wherein
diverse learning sequences can be understood in terms of a common scale—with
advances in computer-based tools. The result is a radically new approach to test-
ing, an approach that could form the foundation for a mass customized testing
infrastructure that provides all the benefits of embedded, formative tests, with the
kind objectivity and validity that are desirable in standardized tests. Moreover, as
discussed in the conclusion, this new approach to test design reframes what is con-
sidered possible and preferable for the future of the testing infrastructures that shape
educational institutions.
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