New possibilities for assessment and testing in education : an analysis and evaluation of new procedures employing state of the art neurological testing applied to educational assessment

Assessment in educational settings so far has centred on self-report style questionnaires and the assessor's own observations. While direct neurological testing of personality factors is not yet available, advances in our understanding of brain mechanisms underlying various personality and learning factors has given us hope that more refined knowledge of brain systems will lead to this more direct form of testing in the not to distant future. This holds the prospect of more reliable and valid assessment, particularly with children who are uniquely susceptible to test situation characteristics and biases and language development issues. This paper looks at the advances in our knowledge of the brain in relation to the big five personality factors, well-being and self-concept and how these findings could translate to a useful assessment tool in school settings. The paper further explores the reliability, validity and efficacy issues of this type of testing against that of the established pen and paper type assessment. It is suggested that professionals in schools will benefit most from dual assessment of both brain function and self-report measures to get the best possible data for use with students.