Classroom Dynamic Assessment: A Critical Examination of Constructs and Practices

Abstract

This article explores the implementation of dynamic assessment (DA) in an elementary school foreign language classroom by considering its theoretical basis and its applicability to second language (L2) teaching, learning, and development. In existing applications of L2 classroom DA, errors serve as a window into learners' instructional needs and provide opportunities for the teacher to mediate, prompting learners to reformulate their utterance. The investigation presented here draws on data from a combination of classroom DA and small-group work in a unit focused on Spanish interrogatives. Extending earlier studies (Davin, 2013;Davin & Donato, 2013), it critically evaluates the extent to which the teacher's DA records, the heart of DA assessment, provide sufficiently robust evidence for central claims in DA for the dynamic link between assessment and teaching in order to advance learner development. It does so by contextualizing the teacher's record with transcripts from smallgroup work that alternated with DA, and with a microgenetic analysis of two learners across both DA and small-group work. It concludes that whole classroom applications of DA will require considerable expertise on the part of teachers that would have to become part of teacher education programs. Equally importantly, it will benefit from being anchored in an explicitly meaning-oriented theory of language.

L2 Dynamic Assessment: An Activity Theory Perspective

“…To be fair, much of L2 DA research has taken place in dyads (DaSilva Iddings, ; Poehner, ; Poehner & van Compernolle, ; Siekmann & Charles, ), with one teacher and one learner. Of the few DA studies that have taken place in a group format, all have used a scripted approach to DA (Davin, ; Davin, Troyan, & Hellmann, ; Lantolf & Poehner, ; Poehner, ). Therefore, future research should consider whether unscripted approaches to DA carried out in the group setting can retain the necessary features of DA or whether they simply are “socioculturally focused corrective feedback” (Rassaei, , p. 420) or “SCT‐oriented CF studies” (Sheen, , p. 82).…”

“…DA is a way to “externalize psychological processes, rendering them available for examination as well as intervention intended to promote development” (Lantolf & Poehner, , p. 146). The challenge, as Davin () contends, concerns determining whether a teacher's mediation, in this case prompting, results in development. In the present study, data were insufficient to determine whether Martin's implementation of DA permitted him to diagnose and promote learners’ language development.…”

“…It is important that future research captures how the teacher uses the data gathered during DA as well as data on learners’ development. Future research must delve more deeply into the outcome component of the activity system by assessing learners’ awareness, volition, and systematicity of the concept as well as the unity of cognition and emotion in order to determine whether development has occurred as a result of the teacher's response action (Davin, ; Mahn, ).…”

“…CLASSROOM DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT (DA) has gained popularity within Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory (SCT) as a way to unify instruction and assessment to promote learners’ language development. One strand of this research, referred to as second language (L2) curricular DA (Davin, ), takes place dialogically between a teacher and learners. During interaction, a teacher mediates a learner using verbal prompts that begin as implicit forms of assistance and become increasingly explicit if needed by the learner (Aljaafreh & Lantolf, ).…”

“…However, this is a contentious term whose meaning is hotly debated by those seeking to understand Vygotsky's intended meaning of the construct. A deeper discussion of the ZPD and its consequences for distinguishing learning from development is beyond the scope of the present study, but can be found in Davin (), Kinginger (), and Chaiklin ().…”