Essentials of WISC-V Assessment

Dawn P. Flanagan, Vincent C. Alfonso

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781118980996
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The comprehensive reference for informative WISC-V assessment

Essentials of WISC-V Assessment provides step-by-step guidance for administering, scoring, and interpreting the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V). Packed with practical tips for more accurate assessment, this informative guide includes numerous case studies that illustrate a range of real-world issues. Special attention is devoted to the assessment of individuals who have significant learning difficulties, such as learning disabilities, and who speak English as a second language. The WISC-V is a valuable assessment tool, but it must be administered and scored appropriately to gain meaning from score interpretation. This book gives you an in-depth understanding of the WISC-V assessment and interpretive process to assist practitioners in:

• Conducting efficient and informative WISC-V assessments
• Utilizing WISC-V in cross-battery and neuropsychological assessment
• Applying WISC-V in the identification of specific learning disabilities
• Utilizing WISC-V in nondiscriminatory assessment of English language learners
• Writing theory-based WISC-V reports
• Linking WISC-V findings to interventions based on individual performance

As the world's most widely-used intelligence test for children, the WISC-V is useful in diagnosing intellectual disabilities and specific learning disabilities, as well as in identifying giftedness. In this volume, sample reports demonstrate how WISC-V assessment results may be linked to interventions, accommodations, modifications, and compensatory strategies that facilitate positive outcomes for children. Essentials of WISC-V Assessment is the all-in-one practical resource for both students and practitioners. The book can be used on its own or with companion software (purchased separately) that provides a user-friendly tool for producing psychometrically and theoretically defensible interpretations of WISC-V performance, and may be used to develop interventions based on each child's strengths and weaknesses.

One
Overview of the WISC-V

W. Joel Schneider, Dawn P. Flanagan, and Vincent C. Alfonso

This book was written for assessment professionals who want to use the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth Edition (WISC-V; Wechsler, 2014a) to help children and adolescents by understanding their cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Such a statement should be too obvious to mention, but it is not. Too often, in the public's eye, the purpose of intelligence tests is to assign labels to people, not to help them. Among some intellectuals, it is common to view intelligence tests as tools of oppression, designed to harm the least privileged and most vulnerable among us (Carroll, 1997).

Intelligence tests are—and have always been—powerful tools, and powerful tools can be used for good or for ill. People who are uneasy about the use of intelligence tests would likely be reassured if we clearly communicate to them what we actually do with intelligence tests: We use them as one tool among many to decide how best to help people. Professionals who use individually administered intelligence tests such as the WISC-V are not callous bureaucrats mechanically rendering judgments that decide the course of people's lives. Most of us sacrificed our twenties on the altar of graduate school. We did so gladly; becoming a member of the helping professions is a great honor. The thought of using intelligence tests to harm anyone, children in particular, is frightful.

Indeed, Alfred Binet and his colleagues developed modern intelligence tests because of their egalitarian ideals. They needed to find a fair and accurate method of identifying children and adolescents who needed additional help in school (Binet & Simon, 1916). This purpose continues to motivate most practitioners. Nevertheless, there is no denying that intelligence tests have been used to perpetrate injustice, particularly in their early history (Fancher, 1985). From the beginning, though, there were thoughtful and sophisticated theorists, practitioners, and ordinary people who fought against these injustices (Lohman, 1997). Even the person who coined the term intelligence quotient or IQ, William Stern (1933), worked tirelessly to ensure that intelligence tests were used for preserving human dignity instead of degrading individuals:

Under all conditions, human beings are and remain the centers of their own psychological life and their own worth. In other words, they remain persons, even when they are studied and treated from an external perspective with respect to others' goals. . . . Working “on” a human being must always entail working “for” a human being. (Trans. Lamiell, 2003, pp. 54–55)

From Prediction to Prevention

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