Learning to mediate: Teacher appropriation of dynamic assessment

Abstract

This article examines how four second language (L2) teachers' discursive practices changed as they attempted to implement dynamic assessment (DA) in their classrooms. Classroom artifacts, lesson recordings, and reflections from two pre-service teachers and two in-service teachers, both before and after a professional development series on DA, were included in the analysis. Findings revealed that all teachers' approaches to mediation changed. In Pre-DA lessons, teachers defaulted to recasts when attempting to provide mediation. Following the DA professional development series, all teachers expanded the discursive space by providing more prompts and fewer recasts. However, findings illustrated that the four teachers appropriated DA to varying degrees, suggesting that some may have required additional mediation to appropriate all of the distinguishing features of DA. We discuss implications of these findings for teacher preparation.

L2 Dynamic Assessment: An Activity Theory Perspective

“…The AT triangles also illustrate DA as a complex practice, involving a variety of interrelated components. Ironically, many L2 DA studies including ours (Antón, ; Davin, ; Davin et al., ; Lantolf & Poehner, ; Poehner & Lantolf, ), have paid little attention to this complexity. From an AT perspective, such research has privileged the tools and outcomes of mediation during L2 DA by portraying teachers’ use of DA mainly as a series of mediating prompts.…”

“…Martin took part in a professional development program on L2 classroom DA as part of a larger investigation involving two other EFL teachers (see Davin et al., ). The program included four 2‐hour workshops designed to improve teachers’ understanding of the interconnectedness of assessment and instruction while also targeting their classroom discursive practices through the use of DA.…”

“…To investigate this claim from an empirical rather than solely a theoretical stance, the present study analyzed the changes that an English‐as‐a‐foreign‐language (EFL) teacher experienced in the way he responded to learners’ inaccurate utterances as he endeavored to incorporate DA into his practice following professional development on classroom L2 DA. In Davin, Herazo, & Sagre (), we documented how teachers appropriated DA for responding to learners’ specific language errors during oral classroom interaction. Using discourse analysis, we found that teachers shifted from a reliance on recasts, defined as the “teacher's reformulation of all or part of a student's utterance, minus the error” (Lyster & Ranta, , p. 46) to a reliance on prompts, discursive moves that allowed learners to reflect on their errors and, through teacher support, self‐correct.…”

“…This teacher, Martin (pseudonym), was one of the participants described in Davin et al. (). Referring to the changes he was experiencing in his teaching during professional development, Martin commented that he felt he was “breaking traditional paradigms regarding [his] teaching practice.” This comment prompted us to return to our dataset for a detailed AT analysis of how the different components shaping and being shaped by Martin's response actions (i.e., subject, object, mediation tools, rules, community, and division of labor) changed and interrelated as a result of Martin's use of DA in his teaching activity.…”

Prompting All Students to Learn: Examining Dynamic Assessment of Special Needs and Typical Students in a Prekindergarten Inclusive French Program

“…Perhaps since the focus of the DA collaboration sessions was on target language prompts, the teacher did not consider her use of English as a valid prompting strategy. It is also possible that she used English with particular students to keep the lesson moving or when other attempts at mediation failed (see Davin, Herazo, & Sagre, ). Interestingly, prompts in English often elicited an appropriate L2 response from the whole class or for a specific student.…”