Histories of creativity have often included discussions of its origins and examined pivotal moments in their societal contexts (Nelson 2010; Simonton 2001; Still & d'Inverno 2016; Wasserman 2012). Some have considered creativity's compromised status among academics and in schools that resulted from divergent notions of what it means to create…

Labels for scores stemming from intelligence tests have been employed since their inception in the United States. The purpose of this study was to systematically identify and document score labels for IQs used during the past 102 years. Using pairs of reviewers, score labels from 40 tests were reviewed, and 61 unique labels were identified.…

With just one exception, all of the volumes in Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius report the results of a longitudinal study of more than a thousand intellectually gifted children. That single exception is Volume II, Cox's single-authored "The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses," which instead was a retrospective study of 301…

This paper explores the way in which psychologists classified immigrant children as feebleminded through the use of intelligence testing and how state organisations consequently segregated them from public schools based on the scientific evidence. First, I show the way in which the psychologist Lewis Terman utilised intelligence testing to…

This article focuses on the role the Dutch school for children with "learning and behavioural problems" (LOM) has played in knowledge production about learning disabilities and in the development of academic study of special education between 1949 and 1985. LOM-schooling grew rapidly during these years and attracted relatively many…

The history of intellectual assessment with children and youth in Peru is presented from the foundation of scientific psychology in Peru until now. Current practices are affected by the multicultural ethnolinguistic diversity of the country, the quality of the different training programs, as well as by Peruvian regulations for becoming an academic…

This article pays attention to the regional embeddedness of early research on giftedness, looking principally at the works of Lewis Terman and his peers, between the 1910s and 1930s. The rhetoric, ideology, and aesthetics of giftedness in those early works were, I argue, stamped by the context and imaginary of Progressive-Era California and shaped…

This article explores the political, religious, and ideological backdrop to psychology and pedagogy under Franco's dictatorship. To this end, it analyses the important research carried out between 1940 and 1944 by the psychologist and pedagogue José J. Jover y Piquer into the intelligence, mentality, and moral judgement of a large number of…

This paper analyses how high-stakes, standardised testing became the policy tool in the U.S. that it is today and discusses its role in advancing an ideology of meritocracy that fundamentally masks structural inequalities related to race and economic class. This paper first traces the early history of high-stakes testing within the U.S. context,…

Since its founding in April 1932, "The Journal of Negro Education" has published articles, reports, and reviews examining the results of intelligence and other mental tests given to African Americans. In these studies, historically social scientists contributing to the "JNE" sought to clarify what these intelligence tests were…

The association between Lewis M. Terman and the World Book Company is traced in order to gain insight about the role of test publishing in the testing movement. The test publisher assumes the position of an intermediary between the test developer and the educational administrator responsible for making decisions about test adoption. Terman began…

A decade ago intelligence testing was in its beginnings in the United States. There were no standardized tests available except those of the Binet-Simon scale. These tests had been used but little, and chiefly for the detection and classification of the backward and the feeble-minded. Goddard had just begun pioneer work in this field, while…