Suppose you come home late at night after you have been at Olin studying for a major midterm you have the following day to find a sign on your door saying, “Come back later, please!” Your roommate’s boyfriend/girlfriend is staying in your room for the night; your bed is unavailable. What do you do? 

University psychology Professor Steven Stemler is currently overseeing a research project partially funded by the Army Research Institute. The project’s research examines our ability to handle situations like the one described above. There are many facets to his research, one of which analyses the purpose of schooling, as well as how to measure decision-making and practical intelligence. 

“The big picture is that I am interested in the purpose of school,” Stemler said. “Why do we go to K-12 school? Why do we go for higher education? What is the mission that schools are set up to do?” 

Stemler is collaborating with Professor Damian BeBell of Boston College, with whom he has worked since 1998. Together, the two have written a number of papers and presented their findings.

“Personally, I think this research has led to some really unique and valuable ways to approach the age-old (yet rarely asked) question: ‘What is the purpose of school in America?’” BeBell wrote in an e-mail to the Argus.

Schools generally emphasize five major things: cognitive development, academic skills, citizenship, social and emotional development and vocational skills. According to Stemler’s research thus far, the number one thing schools focus on is citizenship.

The crucial question for Stemler, however, is how the education system designs tests and how those tests align with measuring what school says are important. 

“I am a testing guy,” Stemler said. “I am interested in saying, ‘Well, we know how to measure reading and writing, what about other things? Like social intelligence? And citizenship? And all of these other things we say are important.”

Stemler became interested in testing when he was a college student. He was pre-med, and described himself as “not having dropped out when he probably should.” Stemler knew when he completed his undergraduate education that he wouldn’t get into medical school due to the nature of the MCATs. He also knew that despite his test scores, he would make a good doctor. This disparity led him to begin to explore the nature of testing itself. Currently his work focuses on testing in higher education, particularly at Wesleyan. 

His current project involves creating tests that measure practical intelligence, which he calls situational judgment tests. In them, Students are posed with challenging situations, such as the roommate example, that the average student might face. Stemler then examines students’ ability to adapt to the situation. 

The Army Research Institute, one of the leading institutions funding psychological and intelligence research, is interested in his work due to its potential to help them identify creative individuals in their junior officer corps. The Army believes that more creative people make better decisions, often making them better leaders and officers. According to Stemler, they interested in looking at adaptability and mental flexibility—an extension of Stemler’s research on schools. 

“They’re interested in measuring the concept of adaptability, whether we get stuck responding to situations in a certain way,” Stemler said. “This is important at the college and the military level. You start off going in a certain direction and then you hit an obstacle. Do you try and keep going in that direction or shift your game plan?”

While his tests only involve a general pool of college students, his findings with these students can apply to the army as well. According to Stemler, the reason the army is spending money on training soldiers to be adaptive is because adaptability in a military environment really means survival.

“You want [soldiers] to survive in new environments,” Stemler said. “Well, [without adaptability] you can’t train them to survive. People prepare for what they’re going to see, but there’s always new stuff that comes along.”