Article summary with Assessing potential for learning in school children. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education by Resing a.o. - 2020

What does dynamic assessment entail?

Psychological assessment is often applied in educational settings in a static form. We distinguish static assessment and dynamic assessment.

• Dynamic assessment and dynamic testing are umbrella concepts, denoting a variety of different assessment and testing forms that incorporate feedback, hints or training in the assessment process and aim to measure progress in solving cognitive tasks. In doing so they provide an indication for the potential for learning of individuals.
• Static assessment and testing are umbrella concepts as well, denoting different test formats that incorporate standard instructions with out further feedback, aiming to measure one's abilities or achievements at a certain moment in time. In doing so they provide an indication of what the individual knows or has learned up to that moment in time.

Dynamic measures are developed primarily to assess developing or yet-to-develop abilities in a setting in which the assessor helps the child solve the tasks and teaches the child how to solve these tasks more independently. Consequently, dynamic assessment outcomes are largely focused on a child's potential for learning, rather than past learning experiences. They are deemed by proponents to provide a better or more complete picture of a child's cognitive abilities.

What is the difference between dynamic assessment and dynamic testing?

Dynamic assessment formats can be very different from each other, ranging from individ­ually based forms of mediation, often called dynamic assessment, to structured scaffold­ing or highly standardized procedures offered to groups or individuals, often called dy­namic testing.

What does the history of research into learning potential look like?

The concept of learning potential, which is the underlying prin­ciple of DA/T, goes back to the ideas of Alfred Binet. At the beginning of the 20th cen­tury, he defined intelligence as the ability to learn. In 1934, both Lev Vygotksy and André Rey founded a theoretical basis regarding dynamic instead of static testing or assessment of children’s intellectual abilities. Until 1960 however, research on individual differences in intelligence was sparse. From 1970, a number of pioneers started developing DA/T models and studies.

What did the seminal work of Vygotsky entail?

Vygotsky considered learning to be a social process involving external interactions. Parents, more capable other children or teachers initially guide the learning process of the child by selecting a part of the task to be solved and by structuring task solving. The typically developing child will then gradually take over control of the activities, which ends up as the child’s internal, individual cognitive activities by a process of internaliza­tion. A developmental process from external, other-regulation to internal, self-regulation takes place. In relation to this concept of internalization, Vygotsky introduced the idea of the zone of proximal development, in which two levels of development can be conceptualized: the child’s actual level of development, which is the level of cognitive functioning a child shows independently without feedback or support from another person, and the child’s potential level of cognitive development, described as the level of task or problem-solving a child can reach together with, or under guidance of, more capable persons. Vygotsky defined this distance between actual and potential as the child’s “zone of proximal development.

How did Feuerstein's dynamic assessment theory contribute to the field?

Feuerstein’s ideas about cognitive development are, at least in part, parallel to Vygotsky’s concept of internalization. His theory, and more specifically the assessment instruments he created, were also influenced by the work of Rey, who developed a large number of static instruments to test the educability of children. Feuerstein and his colleagues argued that through mediated learning experiences the exist­ing cognitive structure of a deprived person will be modified. Their assessment proce­ dures are characterized by a non-standardized, individualized assessment and mediation procedure. In contrast, the theory of Vygotsky focused more on standardized assessment of the already available but hidden cognitive potential of a child, by exploring the zone of proximal development, and from there described optimized, instructional ways to enhance the potential of this person.

How did Budoff contribute to the development of learning potential tests?

Budoff and his colleagues constructed and evaluated learning potential tests from the point of view that these could be a good alternative to static test procedures. Their tests were in particular aimed at children and adolescents from lower socio-economic or socio­cultural backgrounds, who had to gain their education under non-optimal conditions and had lower scores on tests. According to Budoff and colleagues, the learning potential testing method was not just aimed at improving test scores and a better classification of the chil­dren. Equally important were familiarization with the test situation and diminishing nega­tive expectations or test anxiety.

What does Guthke's work on 'Lerntests' entail?

Guthke developed three types of learning potential test instruments, all consisting of a pretest, a training and a posttest. The research of Guthke and colleagues was mainly focused on achieving better prediction of school achievement and, later on, the development of computerized, task-specific instruction forms.

What does the Testing the Limits Approach of Carlson and Wiedl entail?

Carlson and Wiedl considered that standard, static testing often resulted in underesti­mates of the cognitive potential of a child. Their empirical studies focused on various cog­nitive, affective and conative aspects that could influence test performance, such as mo­tivation, test anxiety, impulsivity and executive functions such as planning. Their ap­proach differs from the test-train-test model that most other researchers in dynamic test­ing utilize. Instead they used forms of testing the limits, or extension testing, integrated into the conventional test procedure.

What is the Graduated Prompts Approach by Campione and Brown?

Campione and Brown’s research on dynamic testing was also highly influenced by Vygot­sky, and their work has inspired many contemporary researchers. Training procedures that were developed from their perspective consist of standardized, structured sequences of prompts that are arranged from very general metacognitive to very detailed, task-specific prompts, finally ending in modeling the task-solving procedure. The provision of these structured hints to children is contingent upon children’s perceived need for help: it is possible to determine the minimum number and types of hints children need to reach in­ dependent task solving.

How effective are dynamic assessment and testing?

Overall, dynamic instruments result in improvements in performance on the variables under ex­amination, over and above static improvement as a result of practice or test repetition. Most improvement in performance occurs when strategy training, general feedback and modelling are used as intervention methods, followed by procedures involving testing the limits, coaching and mediated training. Swanson and Lussier (2001) also concluded that changes in performance as a result of DA/T were not related to learners’ ability group. This supported the idea that such im­provements in performance are not related to performance on conventional measures that are used to classify learners in different ability groups.

Learners with intellectual disability can profit from dy­namic training. DA/T can also be used successfully to combat underachievement in eth­nic minority populations and, in such cases, is a more appropriate assessment procedure for giftedness identification.

What are possible causes of underachievement in testing situations?

There can be several causes of underachievement.

• DA/T is a more equitable means of identifying high potential in learners from a non-majority cultural background. 
• In addition to ethnic background, another factor influencing performance on cognitive tests is the family context. High family risk affected children’s execu­tive functioning as well as interpersonal problem-solving, but it does not influence their ability to learn. 
• In addition to family and background factors, theorists have argued that their child’s ori­entation to testing also plays an important role in a testing situation. Test anxiety in­terferes with performance on a static instrument, possibly leading to underachievement, but this influence can be moderated by a dynamic intervention.
• Various re­cent studies suggest that DA/T of inductive reasoning at least partially compensates for weaknesses in executive functioning, in turn providing these children with more opportu­nity to demonstrate their cognitive potential.

How do dynamic assessment and testing relate to academic skills?

Both traditional and dynamic instruments predicted future academic success. Researchers have also concluded that DA/T uniquely predicted, over and above both traditional achievement and cognitive tests, future achievement in phonemic and phonological awareness, reading achievement, math achievement, general reasoning, and verbal achievement.