This text bucks a trend in clinical psychology. Much of modern-day assessment in the field has sadly become the formulaic application of computerized rules that unabashedly serve the singular goal of satisfying health insurers' mindless requirements for a psychiatric diagnosis. The practice of assessment has become restricted by those requirements. Technicians, or – even more frequently – computer programs, transform a client's responses to multiple-choice questions into numbers and categories that allow a clinical psychologist to begin intervention. In the best case, the intervention is “evidence-based” and grounded in empirical evaluation. But the divide between assessment and intervention has grown deeper, and the client's well-being has suffered.

Haywood and Lidz provide a much-needed antidote to this trend. They carry the torch of the rich tradition of transactional psychology and dynamic assessment in this novel text that brings these principles to life. This is a dynamic application of dynamic assessment.

The critical principle is that there is no divide between assessment and intervention. Intervention is assessment, and assessment is the intervention. The clinician learns about the client by testing the client's skill, knowledge, and ability to learn. The clinician asks a question, the client demonstrates, and the clinician aligns that response with an intricately structured, multi-dimensional schema and then asks another question. It is the relationship between clinician and client that is transactional, dynamic, and growing. The interaction is simultaneously an assessment of the client's current level of functioning and an intervention to boost that level.

Dynamic assessment (DA), an interactive, test–intervene–retest model of psychological and psychoeducational assessment, is a rapidly developing approach of increasing interest to practicing psychologists. In one form or another, DA has been applied in psychological, neuropsychological, speech/language, and educational contexts. Several major texts now describe the various theories, models, and procedures of DA. These texts provide information primarily concerning the background, research, and descriptions of DA procedures; however, none of the texts puts these procedures into the hands of practitioners in a way that equips them to implement the approach. Furthermore, although trainers are often well informed about theoretical models and, in many cases introduce their students to the ideas and principles of DA, few trainers actually work with their students to develop and refine their professional application of these skills.

Seeking to fill this void, we describe in this book basic DA approaches and procedures and elaborate the full instructions, scoring approaches, and interpretation possibilities of DA procedures that we and others have developed and that we actually incorporate into our own practices. We use these procedures to extend, supplement, and enrich our assessments to bridge the gap between assessment and intervention and to deepen insight into the functioning of our clients. We present DA not as a substitute or replacement for existing approaches to assessment but as an extension of and addition to these more traditional procedures; DA provides important information that is simply not available from other sources.

In this chapter we review the substantial body of work that addresses the need to link information from assessment to intervention in educational settings. The focus, of course, is on dynamic assessment approaches that have been designed and implemented for this purpose. Use of dynamic procedures very much reflects the increased concern in education, and particularly in special education, for assessment to inform instruction rather than lead primarily to generation of diagnostic labels or classifications for program eligibility. The pressure on regular education to meet the needs of all learners continues, and, even in the most restrictive environments, teachers need help implementing their students' individualized education plans. It is no longer sufficient to limit prescriptions to objectives or outcomes. More and more, the call one hears is for realistic ideas for reaching these desired states, and these ideas should reflect data-based evidence; however, one cannot rely solely on research conducted with large groups for the supporting data. Group research can generate useful hypotheses and set directions for program planning but does not accurately target the needs or resources of individual students. Teachers and parents want to know what works specifically for their children, and dynamic assessment provides a basis for generating this information.

In Chapter 7, we describe a procedure for addressing this need: curriculum-based dynamic assessment. This chapter focuses on what others have proposed and designed and the evidence they have produced for dynamic procedures that involve specific curriculum content.

Even though they are typically not in school and usually may be presumed to be free of psychopathology or developmental disabilities, adults (including, for this chapter, adolescents and senior citizens), encounter many situations in which it is especially useful to be able to identify obstacles to good performance and to specify ways to overcome those obstacles. Integrating dynamic assessment of cognitive functioning and potential into a more comprehensive assessment that includes personality and social variables can enable examiners to go well beyond the standard vocational aptitude assessments that characterize, for example, employment services. Even when psychological barriers, including psychopathology (see Chapter 4), may be impeding the performance of adults, one can identify the cognitive component of those barriers and find ways to overcome at least that aspect. In fact, improving logical thinking can be a key to liberation of the personality and to improved personal, social, and occupational performance (e.g., Beck, 1976, 1991; Haywood, 2000; Haywood & Menal, 1992; Meichenbaum, 1977, 1982). In this chapter we discuss the application of dynamic assessment in work with adults, from adolescence into maturity and old age, using the usual combination of theoretical aspects, assessment techniques, and some specific assessment instruments.

THE TASKS OF CHILDHOOD AND ADULTHOOD

Whereas the primary task of childhood is to gain knowledge of the world and competence in interacting with one's environment, with heavy emphasis on education, the primary tasks of adulthood are work, child rearing, social interaction, and learning in non-school contexts.

In the foregoing chapters, we have presented and described in detail specific dynamic assessment procedures that we have designed and used with a variety of clients in both clinical and educational settings. Although we have devoted considerable space to introducing readers to the basic concepts and models of dynamic assessment, the primary purpose of the book is to move credentialed practitioners as close as possible to being able to apply this model in their own settings. Our intent is to be as practice oriented as possible within the constraints of this format; nevertheless, it is impossible to proceed as an examiner within the dynamic assessment model without being aware of some basic issues that need to be considered and addressed. We therefore use this final chapter to acknowledge and highlight some of these, which will serve as our way of summarizing where we think we have been and where we think and hope we are going.

LEARNING POTENTIAL

The concept of dynamic assessment arose as a means of assessing learning potential – the capacity to learn more effectively than was either demonstrated by present performance or predicted by standardized tests of intelligence. The idea that individuals might (indeed, do) have greater capacity for learning than they typically demonstrate, although prevalent in psychological and philosophical literature, was first institutionalized in a more or less scientific fashion by Vygotsky, who introduced the notion of a “zone of proximal development.

The first important step in the search for effective methods for assessing variations in some supposed quality or characteristic is to formulate a systematic conception of the nature of that entity. In the case of dynamic assessment, we are trying to assess variations in ability – specifically, ability to perceive, think, learn, and solve problems in logical ways. In other words, we are asking how to assess mental functioning; therefore, a model of mental functioning is necessary. Without such a model, attempts at assessment would be unsystematic, even chaotic, inconsistent, and ultimately extremely difficult. In this chapter, we present a model that represents our systematic view of the nature and development of human ability.

There are essentially two ways in which one can view the nature of mental functioning. The first is to ask questions such as, “What is ability, what are its components, origins, and correlates?” In other words, one can try to define the nature of the latent variable, that special quality of human ability that is unobservable and by any direct means immeasurable, whose existence must be inferred from its presumed effects on and relationships to other, more observable variables. In the assessment of individual differences in intelligence, for example, the latent variable is intelligence, whereas the score on an intelligence test, often transformed into IQ, is the manifest variable, the observable and measurable datum on the basis of which we make inferences about the latent variable.

DEFINITIONS

Dynamic assessment (DA) is no longer a new approach to psychological and educational assessment; in fact, some of its current applications have been around for more than a half century (see, e.g., Feuerstein, Richelle, & Jeannet, 1953; Guthke & Wingenfeld, 1992). Despite such a relatively long history, it is still not widely practiced around the world (Elliott, 1993; Lidz, 1991, 1992). In April 2005, 588 literature citations relating to dynamic assessment were listed at the Web site www.dynamicassessment.com. The majority of those are of recent date, suggesting a rapid growth of interest in this topic in the last 10 to 15 years. A much broader search engine (www.google.com) produced 17,800,000 hits for this term; to be sure, the overwhelming majority of these did not relate to “dynamic assessment of learning potential.”

At the dynamic assessment Web site, DA is defined as “an interactive approach to conducting assessments within the domains of psychology, speech/language, or education that focuses on the ability of the learner to respond to intervention.” Others have defined it variously, but the constant aspect of the definition is active intervention by examiners and assessment of examinees' response to intervention. Haywood (1992b) suggested that dynamic assessment is a subset of the more generic concept of interactive assessment. He further suggested that “It might be useful to characterize as interactive any approach to psychological or psychoeducational assessment in which the examiner is inserted into an active relationship with a subject and does more than give instructions, pose questions, and record responses.

The term “clinical settings” in this chapter's title refers to those places and circumstances where people go to get help with psychological, educational, and social problems. We deliberately separate such settings from schools. In the latter case, people go there for learning whether or not they have problems. Thus, clinical settings are by definition problem-solving settings. This emphasis means, for one thing, that assessment activities can have a sharper focus: Although finding the precise nature of problems is often a clinical task, discovering whether problems exist is usually not an essential part of that task. School settings and clinical settings differ in the typical nature of the problems that require assessment and, most important, in the outcomes of assessment. In school settings as well as in clinical settings dealing with school-related problems, the outcomes must have clear implications for classroom management and instruction. In clinical settings the outcomes may be considerably broader, the age span of the clients wider, the services available for follow-up more varied, and the outcomes should have clear implications for treatment. In such settings, DA can be especially useful in getting at elusive information that may be more difficult to obtain than is true in more typical settings, particularly information on abilities and performance potential and on the sources of intelligence masking.

The three major problem groups that we deal with in this chapter are psychopathology, developmental disabilities, and neurological disorders.

In this chapter, we demonstrate how information from dynamic assessment can be integrated into both clinical and psychoeducational reports, with the ultimate objective of developing Individualized Education (IEPs) and Service Plans. These plans should flow directly from the information revealed throughout the course of the assessment, which, in turn, should flow logically from the referral questions and the approaches used for data gathering. Embedding interaction-based interventions in the assessment, which is at the core of dynamic assessment, should generate reports and plans that appropriately address individual needs and improve individuals' responsiveness to instruction and intervention. This chapter includes samples of both psychoeducational and clinical reports.

REPORTING TO EDUCATORS

Reports written by psychologists have generally not served teachers well. Teachers want specific, instruction-relevant, feasible suggestions. They want ideas for action, and they want the actions to work. Through the process of assessment and reporting, psychologists are expected to be able to pose specific, measurable referral questions, tailor assessment procedures to respond to these questions, integrate information to address these questions, and develop ideas for interventions to respond to these questions, reducing the gap between children's current levels of functioning and areas of need and the system's expectations.

Most recommendations regarding report writing emphasize the need for clarity, readability, and relevance. Clarity is achieved by avoidance of jargon and use of a conversational tone.

Assessment specialists in the United States and Western Europe are fortunate to be able to select from hundreds of standardized norm-referenced tests. Test authors and test companies continue to provide a steady supply of additional excellent resources. Different assessment models and methods that supplement current resources also are needed, however.

This need was underscored in 1991 as I was preparing to direct the International Test Commission's conference on test use with children and youth at Oxford University. I reviewed then-current literature on desired changes in assessment practice (Oakland, 1995). Assessment specialists were requested to devote more attention to dynamic behaviors (e.g., problem-solving abilities) and less attention to static behaviors (e.g., general intelligence), to assess outcomes needed for the attainment of meaningful life activities, to identify temporary and improvable barriers to performance, and to emphasize formative evaluation methods.

Carol Lidz's book Dynamic Assessment: An Interactional Approach for Evaluating Learning Potential (1987) addressed many of these important issues. Her pioneering scholarship helped set the stage for other scholars and practitioners to become engaged in the use and development of what we now call dynamic assessment. Carl Haywood's early scholarship (e.g., 1992) also helped promote this important and emerging area.

Haywood and Lidz's current collaboration, Dynamic Assessment in Practice: Clinical and Educational Applications, synthesizes foundational scholarship (e.g., from Vygotsky and Feuerstein) and extends it in exemplary ways that enable assessment specialists to address issues I identified in 1991.