The goal of this article is to explore the process of dynamic assessment (DA) with a group of educated adults. Although there is nothing in the theory of DA that would prevent its use with educated adults who have normative development, in practice, the main emphasis of DA research and practice was on children or adults with various special education needs. The potential scope of DA is, however, much wider. One needs only to accept the premise that a person’s current problem-solving ability and his or her learning ability are two different constructs. This study piloted the use of the flags test of logical reasoning with a group of 20 special education teachers. The results indicate that the flags test is suitable for identifying participants with different learning potentials—“high scorers,” “gainers,” and “nongainers.” Recommendations are made regarding specific test and mediation items.

This 20^th anniversary address charts a brief history of the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology, from its organizational conference at Lake Louise in November 1988. International conferences, regional conferences, and successive presidents are listed (and pictured in the case of presidents). Introducing the theme of the conference, the history of dynamic assessment is outlined, with photographs of the pioneers and some present leaders. Problems with standard normative testing are listed. The principal argument is that appropriate assessment methods depend upon valid models of the nature of human abilities. One model, Haywood’s transactional perspective, is outlined briefly.

Here, we present to Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology readers the first in a series of “Classical Articles.” The purpose of this series is to reprint some of the articles that have played pivotal role in the development of the field of dynamic assessment and cognitive education. Some of these articles never appeared in English, and others were published in already defunct journals or proceedings. It seems important to make the current generation of researchers familiar with these texts so that our theoretical discussions can be carried out with full awareness of what has been done before us and how the classics of our field articulated their ideas.

Little attention has been paid to the question about generality versus modularity of the learning potential (LP). The main research question of our study was: Is the students’ LP established with the help of a dynamic assessment of their English as a foreign language (EFL) oral proficiency general enough to predict their subsequent EFL reading and writing scores? Eighty students (38 boys, 42 girls) received a dynamic assessment of their EFL oral proficiency in a pretest – mediation – posttest format. Six months later they took a standard EFL reading comprehension and writing exam. The results indicate that the correlations between oral LP scores and both reading (r = .42) and writing (r = .45) are significant and much stronger than the correlations with the static oral pretest. Oral LP appears to be general enough to predict students’ subsequent reading and writing achievements.

Over the past decade, the number of students with learning disabilities and attention disorders attending postsecondary institutions has increased dramatically. This has given rise to an increase in assessments for documentation and support purposes. This article discusses some of the problems with the assessments done on this population, including the lack of specific training of psychologists in assessment of adult students, differences between assessment of children and adults, and validity issues. The benefits of using dynamic assessment as part of a more formal assessment are discussed. Dynamic Assessment is particularly helpful when scores on standardized tests are lower than expected, the student is from a non-Western European culture, has a first language other than English and/or has an unusual school history, the student is performing poorly in a particular skill area, or when students appear unaware of what they are doing/not doing that is impeding their performance. Dynamic assessments are also helpful for providing data-based recommendations for accommodations, strategies, and assistive technologies. The need for the development of new dynamic tools and research for this population is addressed.

The objective of this study was to investigate whether adolescents and adults with mild and moderate intellectual disability (ID) can improve their level of analogical reasoning following a short but intensive teaching stage within a dynamic assessment procedure. The sample was composed of two age groups: adolescents (n = 24, ages 15 to 21) and adults (n = 24, ages 30 to 73). All subjects were administered the Children’s Conceptual and Perceptual Analogical Modifiability (CCPAM) test and the Abstract Verbal Thinking Test. A repeated-measures MANCOVA of Type of Test X Age Group X Time X ID Level, with Abstract Verbal Thinking score as a covariate, indicated significant pre- to postteaching improvement across all age groups and ID levels. Significant interactions were found for Age Group X ID Level, and for Type of Test X ID Level X Time. Among the adolescents, the moderate group scored significantly higher than the mild group; the mild group benefited more from teaching in perceptual analogies. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that, for conceptual analogies, the synonyms subtest added 10% to the prediction of CCPAM postteaching score; for the perceptual analogies, the verbal analogies subtest added 9% to the prediction of CCPAM postteaching score. Our findings support the central assertion of the structural cognitive modifiability theory relating to the possibility of change in individuals with ID even at advanced ages.

The authors report the evaluation of a metacomponential training program for clients with brain injury, using two key measures, the Metacomponential Interview, and the Social-Problem-Solving Video Measure. Both measures allowed for identification of the metacomponents that were enhanced in association with the metacomponential training. The Metacomponential Interview measure yielded positive findings for the Representation metacomponent and the overall correctness score. The more far transfer real-life Social-Problem-Solving Video Measure yielded for the Planning subtest a positive advantage to the experimental group, but less clear findings in relation to the Representation subtest. Further evidence was obtained by singlesubject trend analysis.

The need for tertiary education screening in South Africa has highlighted the role dynamic assessment has to play in this regard, and as no cumulative statistical conclusions can be drawn from single case studies, it was considered timely to do so. In order to address this gap in the field, a meta-analysis was conducted on studies that focused on the efficacy of dynamic assessment interventions within various settings. Fewer research studies dealing with dynamic assessment have been conducted in South Africa as compared to overseas research in the same area. The study served a two-fold purpose: first, to assess the significance of the synthesized effect size from a number of individual studies whose original intention was an investigation of the significance of dynamic assessment interventions; second, to compare two meta-analytic software programs that are freely available online. Small to average effect sizes of 0.3354 and 0.3481 were generated respectively by both programs, with the typical effect size ranging from 0.2–0.8. The method and results of this meta-analysis are discussed along with the limitations inherent in both the programs and we conclude with recommendations for further meta-analytic studies in South Africa within the field of dynamic assessment.

New evidence is presented that a basic cognitive function such as spatial memory is strongly culturally dependent and quite modifiable even in adult learners. The study was conducted with several groups of new immigrants from Ethiopia in Israel who were enrolled in a year-long educational program for young adults. Static administration of the Positional Learning Test demonstrated that these new immigrant students experienced considerable difficulty with spatial memory tasks. Learning potential (LP) assessment of spatial memory with the same task was then performed with two additional groups of new immigrant students. Though the groups had the same performance level in the static part of the test, their response to mediation was very different. This finding confirms that individuals with similar static performance may have very different LP. Students who demonstrated greater LP also benefited more from the Instrumental Enrichment intervention. The results of this study therefore suggest that LP assessment has added value for immigrant and minority students similar to those in this study, that spatial memory is both culturally dependent and modifiable, and that LP assessment may serve as a tool that can be helpful for planning cognitive education intervention.

The authors conducted an e-mail survey of persons who train practitioners to do dynamic assessment (DA). The report presents the opinions and recommendations of 29 DA trainers from 14 countries. The brief survey includes recommendations and suggestions about credentials, time required for training, content, and follow-up policies for individuals who are being trained to become DA practitioners. The participants generally agree that a broad range of credentialed practitioners could be appropriate for DA training, and essentially agree on the central content appropriate for inclusion in this training with an emphasis on mediation and deemphasis on quantitative information. There was inconsistent preference for training in generalizable principles of DA over training in a variety of instruments and tasks.