Wow! I will have to concur with everyone else thus far; I got a 5/10 (4 more than I thought I would get correct) and none of those five were the one answer I thought for sure I had right! Clearly, if you were exposed to the cultural context/content of these questions they might appear to be easy or reflect every day knowledge, and if you weren’t’ you wouldn’t have any more than a one in four chance of getting and particular question correct.
Intelligence tests are supposed to be samples of problem solving abilities and learned facts. Many rely on IQ tests as good predictors of future learning and academic success. One problem with these tests is that there is a large verbal component in them which is unfair to ELL students or students who have learning differences related to verbal skills or processing. Some IQ tests have memory components to them as well which, when given under timed conditions, really test processing speed (how that reflects intelligence is unclear to me). My main concern with IQ tests and how they are used in education is that they can’t determine factors such as motivation, curiosity, creativity, work habits, study skills, parental investment, and other things that often impact a student’s success far more than raw academic talent. There are several students in the world who, according to an IQ test, are gifted and fail or drop out of school. These students don’t find their fate because they aren’t intelligent, but because of other factors such as being lazy, they’re bored, they don’t have appropriate teachers, they are afraid of being bullied by other kids, etc.
IQ tests don’t cover many of the areas discussed by Gardner in his theory of multiple intelligences, nor has everyone in this realm of Psychology (or Education) even agreed upon what “intelligence” really means. I have sat in IEP meetings centered on the “confusing” results of students’ IQ scores before that seemed silly to me at the time. One student had a very high IQ and was failing many of his classes, withdrawn from participation, and prone to outbursts. This particular student, who some labeled as problematic and academically behind was actually extremely smart and just in the wrong environment for someone with his condition (Asperger’s Syndrome)-the gap between his IQ and his grades had nothing to do with his academic abilities. Another student’s IEP was almost completely designed around her lower than average score on a Stanford Binet IQ test, when it came out later that many of her academic performance issues were due to traumas faced outside of school and almost nothing to do with her actual abilities.
While IQ tests can be informative tools which support other factors of learning and development, I have strong reservations about just how much weight they are given in a classroom. I believe that hard work will take any student farther than raw talent- as determined by any kind of standardized exam.