Possible Palliatives for the Paralyzing Pre/Post Paranoia that Plagues Some PEP’s

Pre/post testing is anathema to many members of the psychology-education-psychometric (PEP) community. This irrational bias stems in part from the dour appraisal of pre/post testing by Cronbach & Furby (1970), echoed down though the literature to present day texts on assessment such as that by Suskie (2004b). In my opinion, the reticence to employ pre/post testing in evaluation, as used so successfully in physics education reform (Hake, 2005, 2006a), is one reason for the glacial progress of educational research (Lagemann, 2000) and reform (Bok, 2005) in higher education.

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