By Milton J. Dehn
August, 29 2024
Copyrighted Material
A few years ago, Carl Romstad, a school psychologist in Minnesota, noticed that the Hmong students he was testing were doing better on some reasoning subtests than on others. He began to analyze the testing data he had, and he also searched for publications that might be related to this phenomenon. What he found led him to hypothesize that some students from diverse populations did better on more informal types of reasoning than on more formal and abstract types of reasoning because children in some cultures learn to reason differently.
After I met Carl, and he shared these findings with me, we began to develop a new test of cognitive reasoning ability. We define contextual reasoning as a more informal, practical, concrete, and less abstract form of reasoning that focuses on the current situation and cues when solving problems. After four years of working on this project, the result is a new test called the Assessment of Nonverbal Contextual Reasoning (ANCR) which will be available by November 1st, 2024.
Our standardization data shows us that children from populations who typically perform worse on reasoning tests than white Caucasian middle class students perform just fine on this new scale with no real differences between different ethnic and cultural groups and no real differences between different parent education level groups.
The new test also works well with recent immigrants, such as ELL children and students with limited and interrupted formal education (SLIFE students).
If you’re interested in hearing more about this, Carl and I did a podcast interview with Jenny Ponzuric on this subject. You can watch the interview on YouTube by clicking the button below this article.
Also feel free to e-mail me or Carl at Milt@schoolhouseeducationalservices.com or cromstad1981@gmail.com.
(The button below will take you to a YouTube featuring Dr. Jenny Ponzuric, Dr. Milton J. Dehn and Carl Romstad , M.S., Ed.S)