David Tzuriel – författare

The last two decades of the 20th century have witnessed a proliferation of research dealing with dynamic-interactive assessment as an alternative to conventional psychometric measures. This book establishes dynamic assessment as an approach that complements standardized normative tests in portraying an accurate picture of cognitive functioning and offering a more adequate assessment of handicapped persons and persons with learning disabilities.

The richness of interactive approaches to psychoeducationalassessment has just begun to be explored and exploited. Thisbook demonstrates the extensive nature of developments ininteractive asessment and points to future directions ofapplied work and theoretical research in the field.

The terms interactive and dynamic would never have been associated with psychological and psychoeducational assessment a generation ago. They have currency now because of widespread dissatisfaction with the normative, standardized testing model, criticism of theoretical concepts of intelligence, recognition of abuses of standardized intelligence testing, and frustration with prediction and classification as primary goals of assessment. It is almost certainly true that public policy concerns propel scientific activity far more often than science propels public policy! In the case of psychological assessment, public policy concerns have arisen in the last 20 years primarily around issues of possible "discrimination" against members of ethnic minorities. At the same time, there has been a re­ surgence of dedication to "excellence in education" goals. These concerns have led to such extreme measures as prohibition of the use of standard­ ized intelligence tests to determine school placement decisions, especially for minority children. They have led also to a search for alternatives to standardized, normative testing. The chapters in this volume represent a variety of answers to this need.

Dynamic/interactive assessment has been a long time coming! It has been almost a century since Alfred Binet suggested that assessment of the processes of learn­ ing should constitute a priority in the mental testing movement, and over 60 years since Andre Rey made the same suggestion. An important model that supports many contemporary approaches to "flexible" or "process" assessment was offered by Vygotsky in the 1920s. The ground breaking work by Reuven Feuerstein and his Swiss colleagues on process assessment of North African Jewish children was done in the early 1950s. In the intervening years almost every serious psy­ chometrist has, at one time or another, called for emphasis on assessment of the of learning, rather than an exclusive emphasis on assessment of the processes products of prior opportunities to learn. One has to wonder why we have had to wait so long for formalization and instrumentation of the methods for doing just that! Of course, we psychologists like to do what we do well, and we have learned to do static, normative assessment, especially of "intelligence," very well indeed. Unfortunately, it is also true that dynamic/interactive assessment has not attracted or fueled the volume of high-quality research that is still going to be necessary if it is to survive as a widely used supplement to static, normative testing. This volume, incorporating a strong research base, goes a long way toward remedia­ tion of that situation.

This book portrays an extensive and intensive discussion of theories and research that refer to Vygotsky’s and Feuerstein’s theories of mediated learning and their effects on learning potential and cognitive modifiability.