Professor Steven Stemler has been an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University for the past seven years, with focuses  on psychometrics (the theory and technique of psychological measurement), intelligence, and educational psychology. Before securing his current position, Stemler taught and traveled all over Central America, where he worked with the international education program at Framingham State College and taught in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. Professor Stemler sat down with The Argus to discuss ethical reasoning, his children, and the American educational system.

 

The Argus: So, what’s on your bookshelf?

Steve Stemler: Which bookshelf? I have many bookshelves. There is a shelf dedicated to statistical analysis—the technical details of testing and how you measure that stuff. Then there are shelves related to intelligence and how you measure that—whether it’s social intelligence or emotional intelligence or more general. There is a shelf dedicated to education and the philosophy of education. Then there is a shelf on conflict-resolution, which is a class I teach from time to time.

 

A: Do you think there are any books that are missing from your bookshelf?

SS: Well, it depends if you mean the work bookshelf or the home bookshelf. They look quite different. From the work one, there aren’t enough hours in the day to read everything I want to read, but I just ordered a couple of books, such as Diane Ravitch’s “Death and Life of the American School System.” I’ve started it but I won’t have time to get through it—I flip through it and do the best I can. I find myself in that predicament a lot; lots of great stuff coming out but never enough time to read it all.

 

A: What about on your personal bookshelf?

SS: I have two young kids, which limits the amount of free time I have to read. So I read a lot of little kid books. We’re into “Magic Tree House” and Dr. Seuss and Dora. On my bookshelf, I like a lot of stuff that is out of my field; I like reading about physics and philosophy just to take my mind in a different direction. There is a guy named Paul Davies who writes really interesting books on physics that are really fascinating to read, and they put my mind in a different place.

 

A: Are you personally writing anything right now?

SS: Yes! There is always writing going. I have a book coming out in two or three weeks—it’s at the printers right now. It’s my first book, actually. It’s called “The School Mission Statement: Values, Goals, and Identities in American Education.” We looked at a variety of school types, what they said their purpose was, and compared them. We looked at historical and legal trends, and what schools exist to do. So, I’m excited about that.

 

I’m also writing journal articles about studies that measure cultural competence in college students. For example, people who studied abroad, we gave them a test before and when they got home and saw if their cultural competence developed over time. Then there’s a study looking at teacher effectiveness in an international context. We have some collaborators in Russia and the U.K. We looked at whether great teaching means the same things in these cultural contexts. So, those are the two papers that are most immediate right now.

 

A: Does your book look at whether schools are fulfilling their mission statements?

SS: No, not yet. That’s the next step, you’ve anticipated it! The point of the book is to illustrate that when educational policymakers talk about school reform, they tend to talk as if all American schools are trying to do the same thing. It’s a diverse system, though. There are Montessori schools, charter schools, public, private, parochial—all focused on different things. Even in the private schools there are different philosophies. What they are trying to do is pretty different, and they look pretty different if you look at their mission statements.

 

For me, the idea is exactly what you said; I’m all for accountability, but what we should do is hold them accountable for what they are trying to do, which is not all the same thing. If a school says emotional development is important for them, we should measure emotional development. Same for reading, writing, math. For that, you need good tests.

 

A: What’s the coolest test you’ve ever designed?

SS: The most fun test is a test I collaborated with a lot of Wesleyan students on: an ethical reasoning test based on the concept that people have a universal set of values. You can read through any religion—most people agree that there is a basic set of values: honesty, kindness. Where people differ is, when the rubber hits the road, which one is more important. So we designed a test that finds your ethical priorities.

 

It’s built a little like the bracket system for March Madness. You’ve got honesty against kindness—which one wins. If you ask people to rate which one is most important, they say all of them are all important, but if you really push them, people differ. Then [the value] moves up the ladder and takes on justice or safety or other values. There is only one that can rise to the top. Your priority system might be different than my priority system, so we’ve designed a test that has a complete set of items that pits all of these items against each other. We’ve got this profile for each individual.

 

Some of the research we are engaging in right now is looking at if we can predict behaviors based on your ranking system. If I know that honesty is your biggest deal and kindness is my biggest deal, then you can imagine the implications for conflict-resolution or negotiation. You would take a different negotiating approach depending on someone’s biggest priority. It’s also got implications for this ethical reasoning capability—can we work backwards and deduce based on your actions what your biggest value would be?

 

The idea for this came out of my reflecting on the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The simplistic interpretation is that these people are just evil and out to get us, which is your common social psychology myth of pure evil. That wasn’t satisfactory; these people are driven by a different value system. They have an internal value system, but what they prioritize is slightly different. To understand that structure, can you work backwards and say what must this person have valued?

 

They must have valued loyalty higher than they valued kindness. If you know that about a person, you can predict what their behavior might be, or how likely they are to be persuaded by a set of arguments. For me, that’s really fun. We have a lot of data on that.

 

A: That’s really interesting that you can test that out of people.

SS: Exactly, that’s a great point! It’s what economists call “revealed preference,” which refers to things that you may not consciously access or know, so I can ask you questions and try to figure those out. So what you answer can show your most important values.