It is interesting to see the testing debate surfacing here - and noting
the cultural gulf that opens up between the US and the rest when it does.
For most of us it is the American affection for standardised testing that
is the reason why the US has problems. Whenever education or training
evaluation issues get debated here people are always adding riders to
their sentences along the line of "....but of course if we do X we might
begin to drift into American ways."
I did some work in a school district in Illinois recently - where a state
mandate requires school systems to develop 'alternative' means of
assessment. I presented some Australian and New Zealand models, and they
then went into workshops to think about whether they might use similar
tools in Illinois. Within 30 minutes they were all busily inventing tests
they could apply to 'validate' the methods I had suggested.
In the workplace it is similarly fascinating to observe New Zealand and
Australian firms adopting modified DACUM as they restructure their
training into competency based approaches in line with our respective
national skillls policies - and then struggling and usually failing to
shoehorn the very American DACUM into the local culture
-- Phillip Capper Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business PO Box 2855 Wellington New Zealand