Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology

Volume 8, Number 3, 2009

Theory
and Research
Dynamic Assessment:
Progress, Problems, and Prospects
Yuriy V. Karpov
Touro College, New York, NY

David Tzuriel
Bar Ilan University, Israel

The authors proceed from the presentations at the 20th anniversary conference
of the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology (IACEP),
Dynamic Assessment: Progress, Problems, and Prospects, to present their reflections on the major issues of dynamic assessment (DA). Among the topics discussed
are the following: what DA actually assesses, how DA informs instruction and intervention, and if mediation should be grounded in the students culture. The authors
also respond to some of the critical points raised against DA and discuss progress
and prospects in the field of DA.
Keywords: dynamic assessment; learning potential; mediation

The title of this article replicates that of the 20th anniversary conference of the International
Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology (IACEP), which was held at Lake Louise,
Alberta, November 25, 2008; therefore, readers may reasonably expect that the purpose of
the article is to review the presentations at the conference. Rather than presenting a review of
the presentations (some of which can be found on the IACEP Web site at http://www.coged.
org/conferences/LakeLouise/), we have chosen to present our reflections on the major issues
discussed at the conference.
In the closing session, many participants expressed feelings of disappointment that, despite numerous dynamic assessment (DA) research articles published and DA techniques
developed, DA is still far less popular among practitioners than are standardized tests. Although some participants advocated giving up the attempts to broaden the pool of DA users
228

2009 Springer Publishing Company

DOI: 10.1891/19458959.8.3.228

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and keeping the pool small, others suggested different solutions to this problem. Some participants recommended that DA techniques be presented to educators in a more consumer
friendly manner, without the use of jargon that is clear to experts in the field of DA but is
meaningless to those for whom DA is a relatively new field. Others suggested that the problem could be solved by training practitioners in DA right from the start through introducing
DA in college and university courses (an idea that was challenged by the reports of other
participants that departments of psychology are reluctant to offer courses on DA in their programs). Some others saw the solution to the problem in providing training in DA to school
administrators (principles, superintendents) who, presumably, will become so excited with
DA that they will then use their influence to implement it in their schools and school districts.
Finally, the suggestion was made that, in order to sell DA to educators as well as to a broader
scientific community, it is crucially important to stress the major educational advantage of
DA: as opposed to standardized tests, DA provides educators with data needed to suggest
efficient instruction and intervention. The assertion about the educational advantage of DA,
which is implicitly taken for granted in this suggestion, deserves a special analysis. We begin
this analysis with a discussion of what DA actually assesses.

WHAT DOES DA ACTUALLY ASSESS?

By definition, DA should make it possible to evaluate the persons learning potential, not just
his or her actual knowledge and skills; however, as Haywood (2007) correctly indicated, the
concept of learning potential is far from being well defined. What complicates the situation
further is the variety of definitions in terms of goals and measurement orientation. In terms
of goals, some perceive DA as a comprehensive holistic system that integrates, in addition to
learning potential, the assessment of specific deficient cognitive functions, efficient mediation
strategies, and a myriad of nonintellective factors, the lists of which are different for different
proponents of DA (Tzuriel, 2001). Others focus on more limited goals of measuring change
in the cognitive domain (Guthke, 1992). In terms of techniques of measurement, some adopt
a clinical approach, trying to avoid quantifying the learning potential (Feuerstein, Feuerstein,
Falik, & Rand, 2002), whereas others are keen on relying on psychometric techniques and
meeting the metric requirements of standardized tests (Wiedl, 2003). In other words, the
situation with DA resembles the one with standardized tests of intelligence: everybody uses
these tests to measure intelligence, but nobody knows exactly what intelligence is. As a result,
different DA techniques evaluate different learning potentials of the individual.
Moreover, as one of the participants argued (see Karpov, 2008), some DA techniques do
not evaluate any kind of learning potential, evaluating instead the persons level of mastery
of a certain problem-solving strategy. Such techniques do not have any educational advantage
over standardized tests. Indeed, if, as Karpov has argued, the graduated prompts technique of
Ivanova (1976) actually evaluates the level of the childs mastery of the classification procedure, it provides evaluators with the kind of data that could be obtained easily through the use
of a standardized classification test.
To conclude, in order to convince the scientific community and practitioners of the educational advantage of DA, it is important (a) to develop a scientifically substantiated system of
components of learning potential and (b) to develop DA techniques, each of which would
target one of the components of learning potential. In other words, the work in the field of
DA should follow the top-down principle: from the definition of the learning potential to the

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development of DA techniques. These days, instead, the bottom-up principle is often used
in the field of DA research: Researchers develop new techniques and then start looking for a
substantiation of this technique by labeling it as dynamic assessment and referring to the
works of Vygotsky and Feuerstein.

HOW DOES DA INFORM INSTRUCTION

AND INTERVENTION?
Good psychoeducational assessment should inform instruction and intervention. According
to the advocates of DA, the major educational advantage of DA relates to the fact that, as
opposed to standardized tests, it provides educators with data needed to suggest specific strategies for effective instruction and intervention. If, however, the concept of learning potential is
not well defined, and different DA techniques evaluate different learning potentials (or even
do not evaluate any learning potential at all), does it not diminish the educational advantage of
DA? Indeed, presentations at the conference revealed a lack of clear understanding and agreement about educational implications of DA among the participants. In one presentation, for
example, the following issue was raised: If DA of two children has revealed that one of them
has a wide zone of proximal development (ZPD), and the other one a narrow ZPD, which of
these children should be provided with intervention first? If we remember that for Vygotsky
(1934/1986), who introduced the concept of ZPD, the childs ZPD prescribes the level at which
he or she should be taught, and the answer to this question is simple: Both children are in need
of intervention (it should be noted that exactly this theoretically correct answer to the question
was provided at the conference by a participant who was a novice in the field of DA!).
A much more important inconsistency in views among the advocates of DA that was
revealed at the conference was as follows: Some presenters characterized the goal of instruction and intervention, which should follow DA, as the realization of the childs learning
potential, whereas others characterized it as the enhancement of learning potential. Rather than
being simply a question of different terms, this inconsistency is rooted in the vagueness of
the concept of learning potential and the fact that different DA techniques evaluate different
learning potentials of individuals or even their level of mastery of a certain problem-solving
procedure. Let us return to the graduated prompts technique of Ivanova (1976), which, as discussed, actually evaluates the level of the childs mastery of the classification procedure. The
only way these assessment data can inform instruction is for examiners to give recommendations on how to help the children realize their specific learning potential of mastery of the
classification procedure (in other words, what components of the classification procedure
the child should be taught in order to be able to perform classification on his or her own). On
the other hand, Karpovs DA technique makes it possible to evaluate the highest level of internalization (symbolic, visual-imagery, or visual-motor) at which the child can learn any novel
problem-solving procedure (Karpov & Gindis, 2000). Thus, this DA technique informs educators about how to help children realize their general learning potential. In addition, however,
the data obtained by the use of this DA technique can be used to provide the children with
intervention aimed at the enhancement of their learning potential (that is, intervention aimed
at the facilitation of the childrens transition from the visual-motor level to the visual-imagery
level, or from the visual-imagery level to the symbolic level).
Another problem that should be solved to make it possible for DA to realize its full major
educational advantage (that is, providing educators with data needed to suggest effective

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instruction and intervention) is as follows: What avenue for instruction and intervention
should be used after DA has been done? At first glance, this seems a strange question: After
all, arent all the advocates of DA devoted champions of mediation as the principal avenue for
instruction and intervention? The point is, however, that the notion of mediation leaves room
for different interpretations. Vygotsky defined mediation as providing children with new cognitive and metacognitive tools at their level of proximal development, and the organization
of the process of their mastery, and internalization of these tools (see Karpov, 2003; Karpov
& Haywood, 1998). In particular, discussing a childs process of learning new scientific concepts, Vygotsky (1934/1986) described it as the process of their appropriation (p. 152) that
arises from their presentation to the child in the form of precise verbal definitions (p. 148). In
contrast, for neo-Piagetian educators, mediation relates to placing opportunities in the path
of learners, creating cognitive conflict and the need to know, and depending on the equilibration process of assimilation and accommodation to resolve the cognitive conflict and thereby
add to the individuals store of knowledge (Haywood, 2003, p. 71). Thus, the neo-Piagetian
understanding of mediation reduces its role to the creation of opportunities for and childrens
needs to construct their own new cognitive and metacognitive tools. The third theoretical view
of mediation is advocated by Feuerstein (Feuerstein et al., 2002). According to Feuerstein,
teaching new tools should start with helping children develop these tools through elaboration
on their existing cognitive and metacognitive tools by probing and by providing them with
questions, suggestions, examples, and modeling in the context of their problem solving. If the
children do not show progress, a more direct approach is applied by teaching new concepts
and strategies and creating new cognitive structures. Different views of mediation inevitably
result in differences in regard to what instructional and interventional methods are advocated
and suggested. To be sure, clarification of the notion of mediation will be beneficial for increasing the educational advantage of DA.

SHOULD MEDIATION BE GROUNDED

IN THE STUDENTS CULTURE?
Clarification of the notion of mediation as the avenue for the realization and enhancement
of learning potential will help to answer another important question: Should mediation be
grounded in the students culture? Whereas some presenters at the conference answered
this question with a strong Yes, others, although not willing to answer with a strong No,
formulated, nevertheless, certain reservations. For example, as all the advocates of cognitive education agree, children should be encouraged to ask teachers and peers questions,
which will lead to the development of their ability to formulate self-directed questions. Such
self-questioning is extremely beneficial for childrens cognitive and metacognitive development; Vygotsky (1934/1986), for example, even defined thinking as internalized discussion,
and Piaget (1952; Piaget & Inhelder, 1969) often referred to the little conversations that
children have with themselves while thinking through problems. Berk (2001) reported extensive research on childrens private speech, some of which is self-questioning and answering. What if asking questions is considered impolite and inappropriate in a childs culture?
Should or should not the mediator violate this cultural value of the child on the assumption that teaching the child a learning culture will ultimately provide more benefit than will
efforts to respect and preserve the childs familial culture? Clearly, there are ethical as well as
scientific issues here.

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The solution to this problem depends, to a large extent, on what mediation is suggested.
For example, as discussed earlier, both Vygotsky and Feuerstein view mediation as the process of development and internalization by children of new tools. Vygotsky, however, believed
that the mediator should proceed from what tools the child needs rather than from what cultural tools and values the child already possesses, whereas Feuerstein suggested that teaching
new tools should start with helping children develop these tools through elaboration on their
existing cultural tools.
As a confirmation of the validity of Vygotskys view of this issue, we refer to the establishment of formal schooling in the third-world countries. Formal schooling is an avenue for
mediation of children in Western industrialized societies; hardly anybody, however, would
challenge the advantage of violating the cultural values of preliterate societies by introducing
them to formal schooling. At the same time, we realize fully that the correct solution to this
problem is impossible without taking into consideration various social issues and cultural
sensitivity.
Tzuriel (2002) referred to this issue during a cognitive education workshop with a group of
educational leaders in South Africa. The question raised by one of the participants coming from
a tribal tradition was: Why should we adopt a cognitive education approach, which emphasizes
the Western type of thinking? In other words, the emphasis on cognitive strategies, systematic
exploratory behavior, analytic perception, planning, and logical thinking discussed in the workshop seemed to that educational leader as opposing the tribal tradition of sharing, associative,
and spontaneous thinking that he came from. The ideas of change, cognitive modifiability, innovation, and creativity were perceived as a menace to the tradition of oral teaching, rote learning, and the values of sharing and collective knowledge that he grew up with and knew best.
Put otherwise, his question came down to: Arent you, the cognitive education people, trying to
patronize others by suggesting a more so-called efficient way of learning and thinking, so different than the familiar system of thinking that has worked well for us for many centuries? To
answer this question, Tzuriel (2002) provided a personal story that expresses the philosophical
foundations and cultural perspectives of the Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) approach:
My father, who was born in 1907 in Yemen, grew up in a traditional simple society
with no technological development (i.e., there was no electricity, cars, or running water
at home). Nevertheless, he comes from a rich culture, which emphasizes learning
as a central value in life, dedication to a spiritual way of life, communal responsibility, noble interpersonal relationships, beautiful customs, singing and dancing. The
culture he comes from was traditional, conservative, and continuous, with a central
theme of perseveration of the status quo, and conscious transmission of culture from
one generation to the next. When he was exposed to the Western type of thinking he
had to adjust, in a very short time, to a technological, open, and constantly changing
society that was different from his in terms of content and experience, and in terms
of structure and form. I adopted many of my fathers Oriental and traditional values,
customs, and an Oriental thinking style, which I apply in my own family. However,
when I am conducting research, teaching my students, analyzing test findings, writing scientific papers, or planning my travel schedule, I adopt the Western type of
thinking. I use an analytic rather than a global type of thinking, apply a systematic
and regimented type of approach for solving problems, and use a high level of critical
thinking and self-regulation behavior (p. 356).

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The main theme that emerges from this answer is that mediation of new cognitive structures
(Western) is not aimed at erasing or contradicting previous cultural norms, values, and identity components, but rather is aimed at adding additional cognitive layers or cognitive modes
that enrich the individuals life and provide him or her with a variety of functional cognitive
structures, strategies, and behavioral options to choose from. The acquired optional cognitive structures allow the flexibility of using one cognitive mode or another depending on the
cultural context.
To conclude, a promising approach to solve the problem of culture and mediation relates
to the clarification of the notion of learning potential, the evaluation of which components of
learning potential a given culture supports with culture-specific tools, and then the development of mediational strategies, some of which may be grounded in the students culture while
some may inevitably lead to conflict with cultural values.

DA: CRITICISM
We cannot summarize this article without mentioning some of the critical points raised
against DA in the past (e.g., Frisby & Braden, 1992) and maybe in some implicit way in the
recent conference. We do not answer the criticism, as this is beyond the scope of this article;
however, we respond to the last point on the basis of Tzuriels reply to Frisby and Braden
(Tzuriel, 1992, 2001).
DA takes more time to administer than static testing. It is a well-known fact that
DA requires more time to administer because of the need to use teaching processes
and record many more aspects of the childs functioning than is done with standardized tests (e.g., initial performance, learning gains, deficient cognitive functions,
metacognitive aspects, mediation strategies, nonintellective factors). The question
of cost-effectiveness is raised frequently as a barrier for implementing DA. In the
preconference workshop, Carol Lidz taught participants to be selective in the use of
DA, and demonstrated specific DA that can be done even in 2030 minute periods
always as part of a comprehensive assessment.
DA requires more skill, better training, more experience, and greater effort than static
testing. The professional skill necessary to do DA effectively is not currently taught in
typical graduate psychology programs, so practitioners must be trained in intensive
workshops long after they have been indoctrinated in the laws of static, normative
testing (Haywood & Tzuriel, 2002). Even with excellent training, DA examiners must
exercise considerable subjective judgment in determining (a) what cognitive functions
are deficient and require mediation, (b) what kinds of mediation to dispense, (c) when
further mediation is not needed, and (d) how to interpret the difference between premediation and postmediation performance. Thus, interexaminer agreement is essential.
This aspect has been studied to some extent (e.g., Tzuriel & Samuels, 2000), but not
yet sufficiently. It seems somehow disingenuous to complain that DA requires special
knowledge and special skills when its benefits are directly related to such knowledge
and skills and in turn have benefits for the children.
The extent to which cognitive modifiability is generalized across domains (i.e., analogical,
numerical) needs further investigation. This is a conceptual problem that needs urgent
research. Many argue that the DA findings might be true for the tasks used in the DA

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process, but how do we know that they apply to school subjects such as math, reading,
science, and language? Haywood (1989) has argued that the more important question is
no longer whether or not cognitive learning is generalizable to various content learning
domains but how such generalization can be effectively and efficiently achieved.
Establishing reliability and validation of DA is much more complex than validation
of static testing because of its broader scope of goals. The question of reliability is
a pressing one, especially given the fact that one sets out deliberately to change the
very characteristics that are being assessed. At least a partial solution is to insist on
very high reliability of the tasks used in DA when they are given in a static mode (i.e.,
without interpolated mediation). Another persistent problem is how to establish the
validity of DA. Ideally, one would use both static testing and DA with one group of
children and static, normative ability tests with another group. The essential requirement would be that a subgroup of the DA children would have to be given educational
experiences that reflected the within-test mediation that helped them to achieve higher
performance in DA. The expectation would be that static tests would predict quite well
the school achievement of both the static testing group and that subsample of the DA
group that did not get cognitive educational follow-up. Static tests should predict less
well the achievement of the DA-cognitive education group; in fact, the negative predictions made for that group should be defeated to a significant degree (Haywood &
Tzuriel, 2002).
The literature is replete with evidence showing a strong relation between IQ and school
achievement (r = .71). The question therefore is why apply a DA approach if so much
of the variance in school learning is explained by standardized testing? The last point
means that about 50% of the variance in learning outcomes for students is associated
with differences in IQ. Following the tradition of mediation, our answer to the last point
is to ask three extremely important questions:

1. What are the sources of the other 50% of achievement variance?

2. When IQ predicts low achievement, what is necessary to defeat that prediction?
3. What factors influencing the unexplained variance can help to defeat the prediction
in the explained variance?

DA: PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

The previous discussion could create the impression that the presentations at the 20th anniversary conference of the IACEP, Dynamic Assessment: Progress, Problems, and Prospects,
revealed only problems in the field. Such an impression would be grossly wrong. The progress in research and theory demonstrated throughout the conference papers clearly showed
the following three areas of agreement:
DA is more accurate and precise than standardized testing in providing specific intervention procedures and individualized educational plans. DA findings are more informative
in terms of day-to-day school activities.
DA reflects better the individuals learning potential (whatever definition is adopted) as
opposed to standardized testing, which reflects the manifest performance.

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School achievement is better predicted by DA criteria than by standardized test scores.

This last statement requires some explanation. What is claimed is that childrens performance following mediation within a DA process predicts better school achievement,
provided that certain intervention steps are subsequently applied to implement the
DA recommendations. A competent DA report will typically indicate the prospect
of improved performance under certain specified conditions of teaching/mediation
(Haywood & Lidz, 2007). If those conditions are not met, the predictions cannot be
expected to come be fulfilled.
We are concluding with the two interrelated questions mentioned in the beginning of our
article. If the promise of DA is so great and if DA is so commonsensical, why then is it not in
widespread use, as it should be? What could be done to convince educators and psychologists
about its utility and extend its use? Here are some possible answers to the first question based
on Haywood and Tzuriels (2002) treatment of these issues.
One apparent reason is that DA is not taught in graduate schoolyet.
School psychologists often have client quotas to fill, and DA is far more time-consuming
that is static testing, so their supervisors do not permit it.
The schools personnel who ultimately receive the psychologists reports typically do not
expect DA and do not yet know how to interpret the data or the recommendations, and
psychologists have not been good enough about helping them on that score.
There is a certain inertia inherent in our satisfaction with being able to do what we
already know how to do, and to do it exceptionally well. Even so, as we have observed
before, what is not worth doing is not worth doing well!
The question of what should be done is complex, as the answer depends on a myriad of interrelated factors. Haywood (2008), in his opening address to the conference, suggested that the
most urgent task is to explore and incorporate new models of the nature of human ability.
He suggested, as one such model, a transactional perspective on human ability, with three
major dimensions: intelligence, cognitive processes, and motivation, especially task-intrinsic
motivation. The concept of intelligence, then, is not seen as useless or as antithetical to the
notion of cognitive processes, structures, or strategies, but as a construct that does not explain
all that we know about individual differences in learning and performance effectiveness. We
can supplement its explanatory value by adding the dimensions of cognitive processes and
motivation. One should proceed from some such model of the nature of ability to define what
it is that we wish to assess, and only then construct an instrument for assessing individual
differences in that set of variables.
We can, further, recognize a considerable range of differences among DA professionals with respect to the need to meet psychometric criteria and then relate those different
positions to the different purposes that they serve. It is seldom a question of who is right
and who is wrong about psychometrics; rather, the question should be for what purposes?
In a general sense, the field of DA is stronger each year, with a continuing stream of conceptual, definitional, and parametric research. The essential questions regarding its validity
can only be adequately addressed after we have addressed the more fundamental issues of
the nature of ability, its components, the nature of learning potential, and perhaps the various

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ways in which learning potential can be conceptualized, divided, and related to instructional
content domains.
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Acknowledgments. The authors express their sincere gratitude to H. Carl Haywood for his insightful
comments on the first draft of the article.
Correspondence regarding this article should be directed to Yuriy V. Karpov, Touro College, Graduate
School of Education, 43 West 23 Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10010. E-mail: ykarpov@touro.edu