Dynamic assessment to improve students’ cognitive: A systematic review

Abstract

Dynamic assessment (DA) was developed from Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (SCT) on cognitive development through optimizing students’ potentials and ways of thinking. In several non-scientific studies, DA has shown positive results on various student performances, such as writing skills, critical reading, and listening comprehension. This review was aimed to find out the form of dynamic assessment instruments which oriented to improve students’ cognitive aspects. The PRISMA was used as the research method. 275 articles were collected from the online databases such as Science direct, Eric and SAGE using the keywords “dynamic assessment” and “cognitive.” The articles filtered by the type of article (research articles), titles, abstracts, and keywords. 41 articles declared as relevant with the review purposes. The articles were reviewed by the reviewer team. 11 articles met the criteria for further analysis. The results indicated the diversity of DA instruments for improving students’ cognitive aspects. The types of DA were: multiple choices test (28%), essays test (27%), short answers (9%), physical tests (9%), oral text recalling (9%), Cognitive Modifiability Battery (CMB) (9%), and vocabulary puzzle tests (9%). Various students’ cognitive aspects can be measured using DA, such as the math problem-solving difficulty, analogical reasoning, conceptual knowledge, writing skills, reading and listening comprehension, and cognitive modifiability. The DA was applied by giving feedback (implicit and explicit instructions) in the form of text, oral, or visual aimed to improve the cognitive aspects of students.