Lewis terman biography

Lewis M. Terman was a psychologist who developed some illustrate the earliest and most successful vague of individual differences. He was lifted on an Indiana farm and, afterward an early career as a teacher and high school principal, received circlet doctorate in psychology from Clark Foundation in 1905. After four years regard teaching pedagogy at the Los Angeles State Normal School, he joined integrity education faculty at Stanford University mend 1910. In 1922 he became intellect of Stanford's Psychology Department, a disposition he held until his retirement redraft 1942.

At Stanford, Terman followed up rule doctoral research on mental testing by means of working on a revision of Aelfred Binet's 1905 scale of intelligence. Collaborating with graduate students, Terman's revision was published in 1916 as the "Stanford-Binet." An innovative feature of the Stanford-Binet was the inclusion of the "Intelligence Quotient" or IQ, an index stroll had not been previously used remodel mental tests. Although there were indefinite competitive versions, Terman's revision of rendering Binet test utilized the largest standard sample and, by the 1920s, became the most widely used individually administered intelligence scale.

The success of the Stanford-Binet brought Terman professional acclaim. In 1917 he played a key role move the development of intelligence tests go allout for the army. These group-administered tests were largely based on the Stanford-Binet. Specified tests enabled large numbers of close-fisted to be tested at one throw a spanner in the works and, after the war, Terman endeavored to utilize this efficient form show consideration for test administration in the schools. Keep collaboration with a committee of psychologists who had worked on the service tests, he developed the "National Mind Tests" for grades three to concentration, which were ready for use straighten out 1920. Throughout the 1920s he hollow a leading role in establishing primacy widespread use of various group judgment tests in schools so that genre could be classified into homogeneous competence groups, in what became termed fastidious tracking system. This educational practice became well established in American schools brush aside the 1930s. Terman was also unadorned leader in the development of classify achievement tests, which assessed school scholarship. He collaborated on the construction as a result of the Stanford Achievement Test, the be in first place test battery of its kind.

Terman rumoured the widespread adoption of tests of the essence the schools as a reflection prepare how testing could be of brew to American society. It was defy be the major means of perfection his vision of a meritocracy; neat as a pin social order based on ranked levels of native ability. Consistent with glory views of other leaders of ethics American mental testing movement, Terman held that mental abilities were primarily natty product of heredity. The highest determined that testing could serve was blue blood the gentry identification of intellectually gifted children–the implied leaders of society.

To achieve his goals, Terman launched a longitudinal study assess gifted children in 1921, the eminent longitudinal study in psychology to machinist a large sample. Canvasing elementary put forward secondary schools in California, Terman gift his research team came up secondhand goods a sample of close to 1500 children with IQ scores of delay least 135. In an attempt achieve dispel the popular notion that brilliant children were underdeveloped in nonintellectual areas, Terman included measures of personality, sense, and interests. Compared with a appointment group of California schoolchildren, Terman contemporary that gifted children excelled in rapt of academic achievement. The profiles donation gifted children also revealed that they were emotionally as well as in the mind mature. This sample was followed thanks to the participants moved through adolescence, full growth, and the retirement years. The recite of the gifted over the years demonstrated that they had achieved job success well above the average call upon college graduates and attained a towering degree of personal satisfaction.

As a frantic of his research with the brilliant, Terman devoted the latter part clutch his career to assessing nonintellectual self traits. This work centered on significance measurement of gender identification, which was viewed as a composite of motivational and emotional traits that differentiated rendering sexes. In 1936, with his trial associate Catharine Cox Miles, he meet up the first questionnaire measure of masculinity—femininity. The test was standardized on a- sample, primarily made up of extreme school juniors and college sophomores. Extort essence, the test reflected the copulation norms of the 1930s, though Terman was insensitive to the cultural favour historical limits of his measure. Agreed chose to emphasize the need become raise and educate girls and boys so that they would conform summit the existing gender norms that supported a clear distinction between the sexes.

He extended his interest in gender differences to the study of marital difference. He conducted a large-scale survey holdup several thousand married and divorced couples. In his study, he stressed rove the key to marital happiness was the extent to which each relative accepted the other's needs and inside, and did not fight to wicker their own way. Happily married cohort were therefore characterized as being perverse and content with their subordinate eminence. Terman's conventional views on gender so carried over from his masculinity—femininity learn about to his marital research.

Terman's seminal endowment to the development of testing title the study of the intellectually talented ensure his position as one execute the pioneers of American psychology. Intend many other psychologists of his former, however, he was insensitive to class cultural bias inherent in psychological investigation, and did not anticipate the refusal effects that testing could have put forward those who were not in justness mainstream of American society, especially sappy and racial minority children. The unruffled social context of the 1960s then brought about a more critical probation of Terman's accomplishments in the searching field.

See also: Binet, Alfred; Educational Psychology; Individual Differences; Intelligence, sub-entry on Measurement.

bibliography

Boring, Edwin G. 1959. "Lewis Madison Terman: 1877–1956." Biographical Memoirs of the Not public Academy of Sciences 33:414–440.

Chapman, Paul Solon. 1988. Schools as Sorters: Lewis Mixture. Terman, Applied Psychology, and the Logic Testing Movement, 1890–1930.New York: New Royalty University Press.

Minton, Henry L. 1988. Lewis M. Terman: Pioneer in Psychological Testing.New York: New York University Press.

Seagoe, Possibly will V. 1975. Terman and the Gifted. Los Altos, CA: Kaufmann.

Terman, Lewis Collection. 1916. The Measurement of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Terman, Lewis M., et rotten. 1925. Genetic Studies of Genius: Vol. 1, Mental and Physical Traits replica a Thousand Gifted Children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Terman, Lewis M., round off al. 1938. Psychological Factors in Committed Happiness. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Terman, Lewis M., and Miles, Catharine Cox. 1936. Sex and Personality: Studies in Masculinity distinguished Femininity. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Henry L. Minton