Abstract
As argued by Poehner (2008), Dynamic Assessment (DA) can substantially improve our understanding of students’ abilities and promote their development at the same time by providing information on both the individuals’ Zone of Actual Development (ZAD) and their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and this way helps us avoid overestimates and underestimates of these individuals’ abilities. The present study, as a result, was an attempt to investigate the role DA can play in students’ placement into appropriate levels and courses of education. For this end, the researchers observed and recorded the placement interviews of four placement teachers in the Iran Language Institute (ILI) and Nashr-e-Zaban. The researchers analyzed the gathered data and found out that the placement teachers dealt more with the students’ ZAD than their ZPD. Adopting the Interactionist Model of DA, and believing that “understanding individuals’ abilities necessitates intervention” (Poehner, 2008, p. 113), the researchers discussed DA and its key concepts including ZPD, mediation, scaffolding, intervention, the assessment-instruction integration and the role these could play in a better prediction of the students’ future performance and emergent abilities. Having discussed DA and its key concepts using some examples from previous placement interviews in a six-hour course, the researchers observed and recorded the placement interviews of the four teachers in the following term. The gathered data were transcribed and interpreted to see if the intervention had an effect on placement teachers’ performance of placement interviews. The results showed that placement teachers then relied more on DA and its key concepts as better indicators of students’ future performance. The implications are for those teachers who hold placement interviews to adopt a more development-oriented approach and assess the students’ both ZAD and ZPD so that they can avoid misplacements into inappropriate levels and courses.
Highlights
To enter a program, students everywhere are supposed to go through a placement exam by which they are placed into a certain level or course of education
The results showed that placement teachers relied more on Dynamic Assessment (DA) and its key concepts as better indicators of students’ future performance
The researchers, observed and recorded five of the placement interviews conducted the following term to see if the placement teachers performed differently or not, to see if they were better able to keep an eye on both the students’ Zone of Actual Development (ZAD) and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and to see if they were concerned with measurement and development or only the former
Summary
Students everywhere are supposed to go through a placement exam by which they are placed into a certain level or course of education. The idea that students can be assigned into a certain level or course of education based on a single performance on a single test at a certain time has been seriously challenged especially by those working in the area of DA (Vygotsky, 1998; McNamara, 1997; Poehner, 2008). Statistical assessment, as argued by Luria, though rooted in firmly established psychometric principles, inappropriately takes it for granted that an individual’s single performance on a test shows a full picture of his or her abilities. On the other hand, holds that a complete picture of an individual’s capabilities needs two more pieces of information: the individual’s performance with some help granted by someone and the extent to which the individual is able to respond to this help to complete the same activity, and to transfer this mediated performance to other activities. McNamara (1997) voices the same argument proposing that “the presence of assistance” can give teachers some key information on an individual’s “potential for growth” and must be incorporated in all assessment procedures and rating scales used to gauge students’ abilities (p. 454)
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