Foreword: Koans, semiotics, and metrology in Stenner’s approach to measurement-informed science and commerce
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2023). Foreword. In W. P. Fisher, Jr. & P. J. Massengill (Eds.), Explanatory models, unit standards, and personalized learning: Selected papers by A. Jackson Stenner (pp. ix-lxx). Springer. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bfm:978-981-19-3747-7/1?pdf=chapter%20toc
Posted: 4 Jan 2024
Date Written: February 25, 2023
Abstract
Over the course of the last 40 years and more, Alfred Jackson Stenner, signed as A. Jackson Stenner and known by all as Jack, in collaboration with an extensive network of colleagues, has led the introduction of a new model of integrated science and commerce. Papers authored and co-authored by Jack on measurement science, reading comprehension, and the creation of more systematic states of affairs in education policy and practice are collected together in this book. Jack notably operationalized technical issues involved in measuring psychological and social constructs, especially reading comprehension. In the background, behind these explicit themes, playful Zen koans, metrological network alliances, and commercial business agreements are all implicated. Most details of the events that transpired will have to be left to others with the needed expertise in contracts, accounting, pricing, marketing, and sales, and who have access to the relevant documents and personal stories to be told. That broader biography and detailed history of Jack’s work seems likely to become of considerable interest, given the innovations incorporated into the model of integrated psychological science and commerce he and his colleagues enacted. But the commercial implementations of the technical processes reported in Jack’s publications are of less relevance in the context of the papers collected in this book than the ideas informing those processes, and their still-unfolding implications. What is of interest here is how Jack and his allies demonstrated the creation of shared social realities that co-evolve in dialogue with objectively repeatable and reproducible measurements. Finally, I concentrate here on Jack’s work in reading comprehension as it provides the most salient focus for considering the development of his ideas on measurement.
Keywords: measurement theory, education, reading comprehension, Rasch models, biography, history, commercial applications
JEL Classification: B23, C18, C31, C38, C54, C55, C63, I21, J24, L15, L84, M12, M53, N82, O15, P46,
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation