Traditional static literacy assessments evaluate acquired knowledge and are prone to floor effects. These tools are also developed almost exclusively for English monolinguals, and therefore cannot be used equitably to evaluate the abilities of bilingual children. Dynamic assessment (DA), which evaluates the ability to learn a skill, is a potential alternative, and more equitable approach to evaluating critical early literacy skills of phonological awareness, sound-symbols knowledge, and decoding. This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the concurrent validity of DAs of early literacy with their static equivalents, and their predictive validity longitudinally with later word reading outcome measures both overall across all populations, and specifically with bilingual and at-risk groups. Thirty studies were identified through searching 5 databases, and the grey literature. Included studies provided a correlation between a dynamic and concurrent static assessment, or a dynamic and a later reading outcome measure. Results of the first random effects meta-analysis suggested that overall, there was a strong relationship between dynamic and static assessments (r=.58). Subgroup analysis revealed that there were significant differences (p=.0012) between DAs of distinct early literacy skills, with decoding (r=.72) and phonological awareness (r=.50) measures demonstrating greater degrees of correlation with their static counterparts, compared to DAs of sound-symbol knowledge (r=.34). The outcomes of the second random effects meta-analysis indicate that there is a similarly strong relationship between DAs and word reading outcome measures overall (r=.58). Subgroup analyses did not reveal significant differences (p=.0593) in the predictive association between DAs of phonological awareness (r=.55) and decoding (r=.58). There were insufficient studies to conduct separate analyses for bilingual and at-risk populations. However, a narrative review suggests that the magnitude of the effect sizes from individual studies conducted with these populations are in line with overall correlational findings. There is also some evidence to suggest that DAs have the capacity to explain a significant amount of variance in later word reading outcomes in bilingual (7-11%) and at-risk groups (7-21%). Future studies should examine the validity of DAs specifically for use with well-defined bilingual and at-risk groups, as these are the populations who potentially have the most to gain from these measures.

Purpose: Dynamic assessments (DAs) of word reading skills (e.g., phonological awareness, decoding) demonstrate predictive validity with word reading outcomes but are characterized by substantial heterogeneity in terms of format, administration method, word, and symbol type used, factors which may affect their validity. This systematic review and meta-analysis examined whether the validity of DAs of word reading skills is affected by these characteristics. Method: Five electronic databases (Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, ERIC and CINAHL), 3 preprint repositories (MedRxiv, PsyArxiv and EdArxiv) and the gray literature were searched between March 2022 and March 2023, to identify studies with participants aged 4-10 that reported a Pearson's correlation coefficient between a DA of word reading and a word reading measure. A random effects meta-analysis and 4 subgroup analyses based on DA format, administration method, word and symbol type were conducted. Results: Thirty-two studies from 30 articles were identified. The overall effect size between DAs of word reading skills and word reading is large. There are no significant differences in mean effect sizes based on format (graduated prompt vs. train-test) or administration method (computer vs. in-person). However, DAs that use nonwords and those that use familiar letters or characters demonstrate significantly stronger correlations with word reading measures, than those that use real words and those that use novel symbols. Conclusions: Outcomes provide preliminary evidence to suggest that DAs of word reading skills that use nonwords and familiar letters in their test items are more strongly associated with later word reading ability than those that use real words or novel symbols. There were no significant differences between DAs administered in-person versus via computer. Results inform development of novel DAs of word reading, and clinical practice when it comes to selecting assessment tools.