This presentation documents how the inclusion of dynamicity affords new learning and development opportunities beyond an achievement assessment purpose. Students’ verbalizations inform teachers on individual second language developmental process and students' envision and experimentation of expanding learning abilities, resilience, and assessment reconceptualization.
In opposition to pedagogies that traditionally oppose assessment and instruction, Dynamic Assessment offers an alternative theoretical framework of conceptualizing this relationship. DA integrates instruction and assessment as a unified activity instead. DA is rooted in L.S. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory of cognitive development (1978), according to which human cognitive abilities can only be fully understood through studying the processes of their development. According to this theoretical framework, abilities are not fixed but flexible and malleable. Therefore, a form of measurement that takes these characteristics into account is needed. This study describes the process and results of a dynamic evaluation in a Spanish classroom. By adopting the dynamic component of assessment, students received an opportunity to react and appropriate to different forms of mediation during the assessment process. Students’ performance was recorded twice in the assessment administration to distinguish and to account for the individual performance and the mediated one. The inclusion of dynamicity afforded new learning and development opportunities beyond an achievement assessment purpose. Moreover, students’ verbalizations inform teachers on individual second language developmental process and students' envision and experimentation of expanding learning abilities, resilience, and assessment reconceptualization. We believe this study will be of interest for educators and researchers assessing prognosis and searching for ways of accounting for student’s learning potential.
