Applied History of Psychology/Dynamic Assessments

Dynamic Assessment
Dynamic Assessment is characterized by an approach first forwarded by Feurstein (1979). Feurstein spoke of the Learning Potential Assessment Device. Feurstein's background was in Israel, working with children displaced by the Holocaust. Feurstein found that on traditional intelligence tests, these children often scored in the very delayed range, but he saw the progress they made with support and the "spark" for learning they had. He thus spoke of the "potential" of children and focused on this ability to change rather than any score. His approach is based on a series of learning tasks with children. Once a child's strategies are uncovered with support (we would characterize this now as "testing of the limits") he would use this knowledge to help children see how to apply these strategies in other situations, specifically within academic tasks.