Dynamic Assessment

Pressley (2002 as cited in Lorch et al., 2007) stated that daily instruction of elementary school-age children, focuses more on helping children gain factual information from stories, and often ignores the importance of how story events are related to one another. Lorch et al. (2007) proposed the use of instruction that emphasises the causal relations among events, in order to help children organise the structure of stories and assist in building more effective representations to guide their understanding and recall of the stories. One approach might be to systematically ask questions of why events occur, to draw their attention to the causal relations in the stories (Lorch et al., 2007). This procedure may help to facilitate the child’s understanding of the underlying coherence of the story, and the identification and recalling of the causal relations between the story events.

In previous studies, some researchers have included comprehension and informational questions during story retelling tasks (e.g. Culatta et al., 1983; Gazella & Stockman, 2003; Liles, 1985, 1987; Sharp et al., 1995), but these questions were mostly asked after a retelling task, and the child was not expected to retell the story again after answering the questions. It was hypothesised that a set of comprehension questions combined with specific questions about the causal relations in the story, will aid children in retelling a coherent goal-directed narrative. These question-answer

strategies are a way to assist children in producing stories that are representative of their true narrative abilities. Recent research in language assessment as well as narrative assessment has moved towards assessment that is more “dynamic”, to determine how children perform with adult facilitation - hence the term dynamic assessment (DA) (Gutierrez-Clellen & Quinn, 1993).

Language assessments (including the assessment of narratives) have traditionally focused on the identification of language impairments based on a child’s current level of performance in a given area (Gutierrez-Clellen & Peña, 2001). However, the clinician must keep in mind that the child being assessed may come from a different cultural background, and may have had different language experiences. The child may, for instance, have had limited experience with storybooks and the retelling of stories. The difficulty with a static once-off assessment, is that children may underperform in a formal test due to language or cultural differences, fatigue, unfamiliarity with the task, or other factors that may be misinterpreted as language impairments (Peña et al., 2006). An assessment tool that distinguishes children with language impairments, and children with language differences is essential in making an accurate diagnosis of a child’s language abilities. DA has been proposed as an alternative method to traditional language assessments, and has been used to assess children’s abilities to respond to a learning experience, as well identifying language differences and language disorders (Gillam et al., 1999; Gutierrez-Clellen & Peña, 2001; Gutierrez-Clellen et al., 1995).

Several studies have explored the use of DA in children’s language studies. For example, a study by Gutierrez-Clellen and Peña (2001) investigated the effect of DA on two bilingual Latin American (Spanish-English) preschool children’s vocabulary knowledge. The Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (EOWPVT- R, Gardner, 1990) was used to measure their vocabulary comprehension. The results indicated that both children obtained similar scores before mediated learning experiences sessions. However, one child was judged as being highly modifiable and showed gains in the EOWPVT-R after mediation. The other child made no gains in the test scores after mediation, and was also judged as being only moderately modifiable during the mediation. This indicates that initial test scores were not effective in differentiating between children’s vocabulary performances. Therefore,

the results of this study indicate that a form of DA can effectively distinguish between children with language disorders and language differences.

Peña, Iglesias and Lidz (2001) compared the pre- to post-test performance of preschool African American and Latino American children, with and without language impairment. Similar to the study of Gutierrez-Clellen and Peña (2001), the EOWPVT-R was also used as a measure of vocabulary. Children were divided into two groups, one group received mediation sessions, while the other group received no mediation sessions. The results indicated that performance of typically developing children in the mediation group improved significantly in the post-test, compared to children with language impairments and children who received no mediation. This correlates with Gutierrez-Clellen and Peña (2001), indicating that DA can effectively differentiate between language disorders and language differences.

The goal of DA is to determine if a child’s performance on a task can improve when specific feedback is given (Swanson & Lussier, 2001). DA is based on Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the “zone of proximal development” (ZPD), and Feuerstein’s mediated learning experience (Feuerstein, Rand & Hoffman, 1979 as cited in Kramer et al., 2009). The ZPD is the distance from the child’s unassisted performance and the level of performance the child can reach if assistance or facilitation is provided by an adult. The goal of DA is to determine the size of the ZPD (Gutierrez-Clellen & Peña, 2001) and to determine the amount of change or growth in a child’s performance when adult support is provided. Two children may, for example, present with the same independent performance level, but one child may require more assistance to reach a certain higher performance level than the other child. The child requiring less adult support may also demonstrate more growth or change in performance than the child who required a great deal of assistance. There are three basic approaches of DA that have been used in language assessments of children. These include, testing the limits, graduated prompting and the test-teach-retest model (Gutierrez-Clellen & Peña, 2001).

The test-teach-retest model is the most familiar approach to DA (Laing & Kamhi, 2003) and is a modern application of Vygotsky’s ZPD to educational and psychological assessment (Gillam et al., 1999). This model starts with a testing phase in which the clinician determines a baseline measure of a child’s performance without adult assistance. The testing phase is followed by a teaching phase, in which the clinician provides a mediated learning experience (MLE). During the MLE, the clinician teaches the principals of the task through, for example, questions, explanations or prompts. This phase also give the clinician an idea of how the child learns. During the retest phase, the clinician measures the change or modifiability of the child’s performance following mediation, i.e. the outcomes of the learning process. The retest phase gives an indication of how children use their new knowledge and skills (Gutierrez-Clellen et al., 1995).

The application of DA on children’s narratives has also been investigated. Peña et al. (2006) states that DA of narratives can be a less culturally and experientially biased assessment procedure than standardised tests, since it can provide information of a child’s cognitive processes, emerging skills and learning potential. Narrative assessment is also found to be useful for children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, because most children are familiar with some form of narrative (Kramer et al., 2009; Peña et al., 2006).

Peña et al. (2006) investigated the effect of DA on children with LI and typically developing children. They assessed children’s narratives in response to wordless picture books, and included several micro- and macro-structural measures. A test- teach-retest approach of DA was followed, and participants attended short mediation sessions between story tellings. The results indicated that typically developing children made greater pre- to post-test gains than children with LI. They were also judged as being more modifiable during mediation than children with LI. Another study by Kramer et al. (2009) also investigated the effect of DA on children’s narratives, and found similar results to those of Peña et al. (2006). These studies indicate that the application of DA in narrative assessment can be used effectively to distinguish children with LI from typically developing children.

2.5.5 SUMMARY

In summary, a variety of micro- and macro-structural measures can be used during narrative analyses, and the type of analysis usually depends on the researcher’s focus. In relation to the narrative analysis measures being assessed, the goal of DA in narrative assessment is to bring about change or improvement in a child’s narrative performance (e.g. in terms of micro- and macro-structural measures) and to determine the extent to which a child’s narrative performance can be enhanced (Gutierrez- Clellen et al., 1995).