Measuring Instruments as Media for the Expression of Creative Passions in Education

Measurement is often viewed as a reduction of complex phenomena to numbers. It is accordingly also often conceived as mechanical, and disconnected from the world of life. Educational examinations are seen by many as an especially egregious form of inappropriate reduction. This perspective is contradicted, however, by a perspective that sees an analogy between educational assessment and music. Calibrated instruments, mathematical scales, and high technology play key roles in the production of music, which, ironically, is widely considered the most alive, captivating and emotionally powerful of the arts. Though behavioral psychology has indeed learned how to use music to manipulate consumer purchasing decisions, music is unabashedly accepted nonetheless as the highest expression of passion in art.

The question then arises as to if and how measurement in other areas, such as in education, might be conceived, designed, and practiced as a medium for the expression and fulfillment of creative passions. Key issues involved in substantively realizing a musical metaphor in human and social measurement include capacities to tune instruments, to define common scales, to score performances, to orchestrate harmonious relationships, to enhance choral grace note effects, and to combine elements in unique but pleasing and recognizable rhythmic arrangements.

Practical methods for making educational measurement the medium for the expression of creative passions for learning are in place in thousands of schools nationally and internationally. With such tools in hand, formative applications of integrated instruction and assessment could be conceived as intuitive media for composing and conducting expressions of creative passions. Student outcomes in reading, mathematics, and other domains may then come to be seen in terms of portfolios of works akin to those produced by musicians, sculptors, film makers, or painters.

Hundreds of thousands of books and millions of articles tuned to the same text complexity scale, for instance, provide readers an extensive palette of colorful tones and timbres for expressing their desires and capacities for learning. Graphical presentations of individual students’ outcomes, as well as outcomes aggregated by classroom, school, district, etc., could be presented, interpreted and experienced as public performances of artful developmental narratives enabling dramatic performances of personal uniqueness and social generality.

Measurement instrumentation in education is able to capture, aggregate, and organize literacy, numeracy, socio-emotional intelligence, and other performances into special portfolios documenting the play and dance of emerging new understandings. As in any creative process, accidents, errors, and idiosyncratic patterns of strengths and weaknesses may evoke powerful and dramatic expressions of beauty, and human and social value. And just as members of musical ensembles may complement one another’s skills, using rhythm and harmony to improve each others’ playing abilities in practice, so, too, instruments of formative assessment tuned to the same scale can be used to coordinate and enhance individual student and teacher skill levels.

Possibilities for orchestrating such performances across educational, health care, social service, environmental management, and other fields could similarly take advantage of existing instrument calibration and measurement technologies.