The predictive validity of dynamic assessment: a review.(Report)

The authors report on a mixed-methods review of 24 studies that explores the predictive validity of dynamic assessment (DA). For 15 of the studies, they conducted quantitative analyses using Pearson's correlation coefficients. They descriptively examined the remaining studies to determine if their results were consistent with findings from the group of 15. The authors implemented analyses in five phases: They compared the predictive validity of traditional tests and DA, compared two forms of DA, examined the predictive validity of DA by student population, investigated various outcome measures to determine whether they mediate DA's predictive validity, and assessed the value added of DA over traditional testing. Results indicated superior predictive validity for DA when feedback is not contingent on student response, when applied to students with disabilities rather than at-risk or typically achieving students, and when independent DA and criterion-referenced tests were used as outcomes instead of norm-referenced tests and teacher judgment.

Keywords: dynamic assessment; interactive assessment; predictive validity; disabilities

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The purposes of educational assessment are to evaluate current school achievement, predict future achievement, and prescribe educational treatments. Traditional one-point-in-time assessments or pretest-posttest assessments have been used to accomplish these aims because the testing is standardized, easily administered, and norm referenced. Traditional tests tend to produce clear-cut results that are used to evaluate, identify, and classify children. Nevertheless, these tests have been criticized for underestimating general ability (Swanson & Lussier, 2001) and lacking sensitivity toward both so-called disadvantaged students (e.g., Pena, Quinn, & Iglesias, 1992; Utley, Haywood, & Masters, 1992) and students with disabilities (Lidz, 1987). The scores of low-achieving students on traditional tests are often difficult to interpret because of floor effects. That is, many unskilled kindergartners and first graders, when given a traditional reading test such as the Word Identification and Word Attack subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised, obtain a score of zero. Is such a score indicative of an unskilled reader not yet ready to acquire beginning reading skills, or does it signal a currently unskilled reader ready to learn after pertinent instruction? Dynamic assessment (DA), an alternative to traditional testing, may be capable of distinguishing between these two types of nonreaders.

An Alternative to Traditional Testing

DA has been variously described as learning potential assessment (e.g., Budoff, Gimon, & Corman, 1976; Budoff, Meskin, & Harrison, 1971), mediated learning (e.g., Feuerstein, Rand, & Hoffman, 1979), testing the limits (Carlson & Wiedl, 1978, 1979), mediated assessment (e.g., Bransford, Delclos, Vye, Burns, & Hasselbring, 1987), and assisted learning and transfer by graduated prompts (e.g., Campione, Brown, Ferrara, Jones, & Steinberg, 1985). Across its variants, DA differs from traditional testing in terms of the nature of the examiner-student relationship, the content of feedback, and the emphasis on process rather than on product (Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1998).

In traditional testing, the examiner is a neutral or "objective" participant who provides standardized directions and does not typically provide performance-contingent feedback. The DA examiner, by contrast, not only gives performance-contingent feedback but offers instruction in response to student failure to alter or enhance the student's achievement. Put differently, traditional testing is oriented toward the product of student learning (i.e., level of performance), whereas the DA examiner's interest is both in the product and in the process (i.e., rate of growth) of student learning.