CALPER Language Assessment

Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research at The Pennsylvania State University

Dynamic Assessment

Overview

Dynamic Assessment (DA) includes much more than what is traditionally understood as assessment. Most educational programs view assessment as complementary to instruction and as a means of determining the effects of past instruction on learners’ current abilities and knowledge. DA, in contrast, understands instruction and assessment to be a fully integrated activity in which the teacher/assessor, or mediator, collaboratively engages with learners in activities that they could not complete on their own. When learners encounter difficulties, they are offered various forms of support, or mediation, such as prompts, hints, and leading questions. In this way, the interaction is instructional but it is simultaneously an assessment because it reveals where learners experience problems and the types of mediation they need to overcome them.

Background

DA can be traced back to the writings of the great Russian psychologist, L.S. Vygotsky. Vygotsky was keenly interested in the development of human mental abilities. One of his most famous discoveries is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Vygotsky explained the importance of the ZPD with examples involving two children whose abilities appeared quite similar when given traditional tests but who responded differently when jointly solving problems under adult guidance: one of the children improved only slightly while the other made substantial gains. According to Vygotsky, the difference between the two children concerned their potential future development. Reasoning that what learners can accomplish today only with support from an adult or teacher they will soon be able to do independently, Vygotsky argued that the two children were actually at different levels of development. That is, they had different ZPDs and this only became clear during interaction. Moreover, the forms of support, or mediation, offered to the learners is instructional in nature and therefore promotes development. Vygotsky urged educators to provide mediation that enabled learners to move beyond their present capabilities as this was the key to understanding and supporting learner development.

DA endeavors to realize Vygotsky’s vision of integrating assessment and instruction as a single activity based on the ZPD. In the eighty years since Vygotsky first proposed the ZPD, a number of psychologists and educators have devised methodologies for systematically constructing ZPDs with learners. Each of these DA approaches is concerned with the quality of mediation offered to learners. In some versions, such as the Graduated Prompt method developed by Ann Brown and her colleagues, mediation is standardized as a set of hints that are arranged hierarchically from most implicit to most explicit. In this approach to DA, each hint is weighted differently, and learners are given scores that take account of their errors as well as the number and explicitness of the hints they were given. In the Mediated Learning Experience version of DA, associated with Reuven Feuerstein, mediation is not determined beforehand and in fact no attempt is made at standardization. Instead, mediators interact freely with learners, providing whatever support is needed to promote development. This systematic yet open-ended approach to DA works particularly well in the classroom.

Application

To illustrate how a DA interaction might occur in the language classroom consider the following scenario. An advanced foreign language learner is attempting to tell a story in the target language. The learner was directed at the outset that because he is discussing past events he should use the past tense. During the narration, however, he mistakenly uses the present tense. The mediator takes note of this, as in a traditional assessment, but then interrupts to repeat what the learner has just said and to ask if there is anything wrong with the construction. When the learner fails to recognize the error, the mediator asks him to pay particular attention to the verb. Still the learner does not realize the mistake and so the mediator suggests that he consider the verb tense he used. At this point, the learner grasps the mistake, stating that he often confuses the past and present forms of this verb. He corrects the problem and continues with his narrative.

This type of interaction is probably recognizable as an instance of teaching, but in DA it also constitutes assessment because the learner’s responsiveness to mediation reveals a great deal about his level of ability. Indeed, some learners might have noticed the incorrect verb tense when the mediator simply repeated the mistake; others may have understood the problem at all and would have needed the mediator to state specifically that the present tense had been used with a particular verb when a past tense form was needed; still others might catch the error but be unable to correct it. The diagnosis that emerges from a DA procedure such as the one above goes beyond simply noting that the learner experienced problems – it helps the mediator to identify the causes underlying the learner’s difficulties and actively seeks to help him overcome them. Thus, while interacting with learners in this way would likely be viewed as ‘cheating’ in a non-dynamic procedure, in DA it is crucial to achieving the ultimate goal of understanding and promoting learner development.

  • Scripted Mediation -> As mentioned, not all DA approaches are completely open-ended. Some, such as the Graduated Prompt Approach, prefer to work out the mediation beforehand so that during DA the mediator has a “script” to follow. This is intended to ensure that all learners receive the same mediation. In this case, mediators might follow a sequence of hints such as: “That’s not correct. Try again.” “Try again, and remember you should use the past tense.” A mediator might also provide the learner with two verb forms in order to see if s/he can choose the correct one.
  • Verbalization -> In another approach to DA, known as Testing-the-Limits, learners are asked to explain how they are approaching the activity at hand, the meaning they intend to express, why they are choosing certain grammatical forms, etc. This may be done after learners have completed the task or they may be interrupted during the task and asked to verbalize their thinking. This allows the mediator to determine their level of understanding and to identify the reasons behind mistakes. In addition, the very act of thinking aloud can help learners to re-orient for success.

Suggested Readings:

The most detailed work to date that addresses how DA might be used in language classrooms is the CALPER Publication Dynamic Assessment in the Foreign Language Classroom: A Teacher’s Guide by J. P. Lantolf and M. E. Poehner. The Guide is an accessible introduction to DA written specifically for language teachers. It is available as a DVD and includes five chapters describing DA theory, principles, and examples as well as a video component illustrating a DA procedure with advanced foreign language learners. For more about the Guide click here.

Poehner and Lantolf have also prepared a more scholarly manuscript on DA that focuses on its theoretical origins and methodological differences from other approaches to assessment. This paper, Dynamic Assessment of L2 Development, is the first of the CALPER Working Paper Series and can be downloaded for free here. Available is also a concise CALPER Professional Development Document on DA by Lantolf and Poehner which you can download here.

CALPER compiled additional readings and resources on Dynamic Assessment on a separate webpage. Take a look here.

A book-length discussion of Dynamic Assessment by Matthew E. Poehner was recently published by Springer. A description of the publication can be found here.

Dynamic Assessment of Cognitive Modifiability by Reuven Feuerstein, Y. Rand, L. Falik & Ra. S. Feuerstein (2003) provides a comprehensive treatment of the Mediated Learning Experience approach to DA, which is especially well suited to classroom applications. This book is not specific to language teaching, and in fact offers many examples from the domain of special education. However, it is a recent and engaging account of an important DA innovation. It is available through the Feuerstein Institute.

 


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