ES evaluación dinámica / CAT avaluació dinámica / FR évaluation dynamique / DE dynamische Bewertung

In the framework of sociocultural theory, dynamic assessment is an educative action based on an integrated view of teaching and assessment as parts of the same process to understand and promote the development of the learners’ skills. However, from a socio-constructivist paradigm, dynamic assessment is totally compatible with formative assessment or any assessment included in that paradigm. This approach aims to design mechanisms that help learners overcome the difficulties they encounter in performing their task. It is not so much about the learners’ accomplishing the task as providing them with appropriate mediation so that they develop their skills and are therefore able to either apply them to similar situations or transfer them to more complex tasks.

Dynamic assessment is a term coined within the sociocultural psychological tradition (Aljaafreh & Lantolf 1994), as opposed to static assessment, in order to highlight the progress and incorporation at the appropriate moment of all the aids necessary for a student to resolve their learning tasks as satisfactorily as possible. In this way, learners are guided during their learning process by means of corrective feedback, which regulates the activity that they are carrying out. In dynamic assessment, effective feedback has the following characteristics: it is contingent, that is, it reflects real needs and finishes whenever the learner is able to perform the task on their own; it is graduated, that is, it provides the minimum level of help required by the student to carry out the task; and it is dialogic, since it is supplied as a result of the dynamic assessment of a zone of proximal development of the student.

References

  • Aljaafreh, Ali y Lantolf, James P. (1994). Negative feedback as regulation and second language learning in the zone of proximal development. The Modern Language Journal, 78, 465-483.
  • Antón, Marta (2012). “Dynamic Assessment”. En G. Fulchery F. Davidson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language Testing, 106-119. Londres: Routledge.
  • Feuerstein, Reuven; Rand, Ya'acov y Hoffman, Mildred B. (1979). The dynamic assessment of retarded performers: The learning potential assessment device: Theory,  instruments,  and  techniques.Baltimore: University Park Press.
  • Lantolf, James P. y Poehner, Matthew, E. (2007). “Dynamic assessment”. In E. Shohamy (Ed.) & N. Hornberger (Gen. Ed.), Encylopedia of language and education: Volume 7. Language testing and assessment. Berlín: Springer, 273–85.