Dynamic Assessment: A Practical Approach to Diagnosis and Instruction of High Incidence Special Lear

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(No Transcript)
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Dynamic Assessment A Practical Approach to
Diagnosis and Instruction of High Incidence
Special Learners
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Dr. Harry FullwoodTexas AM
University-CommerceDepartment of Psychology and
Special EducationCommerce, Texas
75429harry_fullwood_at_tamu-commerce.edu
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Significant Changes

• The re-authorization of IDEA and No Child Left
  Behind are expected to require less testing and
  increased use authentic measures (dynamic
  assessment)!
• Dynamic assessment may be defined as an
  interactive approach to conducting diagnosis
  focusing on the ability of the learner to respond
  to intervention.

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Our purpose

• Operational model of dynamic assessment will be
  presented
• Examples of the model demonstrated through the
  Play Book approach
• Practical experience with the model during the
  presentation for those who wish to participate

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Basic Postulates

• Accumulated knowledge in not the best indication
  of ability to acquire new knowledge
• We all function at less than 100 percent of our
  capacity
• The best test of performance is a sample of that
  performance
• There are many obstacles that mask ability

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Dynamic Assessment (DA)

• A subclass of interactive assessment
• .the activity and intervention of examiners
  designed to produce a temporary change in the
  cognitive function of the consumer
• The term dynamic implies change

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DA The Goal

• assess processes of thinking (cognition) that
  are themselves always changing
• Examiners may engage in specific teaching to
  facilitate change
• The basic datum in DA is a change variable

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DA Another Definition

• DA refers to assessment of thinking, perception,
  learning, and problem solving by an active
  teaching process aimed at modifying cognitive
  function.

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Static Testing

• By contrast, static testing requires the examiner
  to present problems or questions, record the
  response and offer no attempt to intervene in
  order to change, guide or improve the consumers'
  performance.(Haywood Tzuriel, 2002)

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Bottom Line

• DA is an interactive process that fosters
  cognitive intervention and learning success
• Excellent for intervention with disadvantaged and
  special need learners
• Based on mediated learning
• Defeats pessimistic predictions derived from
  results of static testing

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Research Conclusions

• Test performance improves after teaching and
  mediation
• Mediation of logic strategies leads to greater
  performance improvement
• Transfer of mediated strategies
• DA interested in defeating pessimistic
  predictions made for learners on the basis of
  static assessment

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• Teachers gain useful knowledge need to teachno
  one suggests that IQ scores aid in selection of
  appropriate content or teaching strategies.
• Knowledge obtained by DA possible in special
  learners and not accessible during static testing
• Useful for habilitation and rehabilitation
• Useful in defeating pessimistic predictions
  regarding special learners

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DA and Cognitive Education

• This presenter is an absolute advocate of DA as
  the essential tool for cogitative based
  instruction
• The consumer must learn how to learn
• Philosophic framework DA based on theories from
  works of Haywood, Feuerstein, Piaget and
  Vygotsky's

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Bright Star Program

• For preschool and early elementary grade
  consumers
• Objectives a) increase learning effectiveness,
  b) develop efficient cognitive processes and
  thinking skills, c) enhance task-intrinsic
  motivation and d) prepare children for school
  learning

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• Not content orientated rather, focused on
  development of cognitive processes and
  metacognitive operations that appear to be
  prerequisite to academic learning in early grades
• Children are expected to demonstrate higher
  skills of learning to learn than average peers

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• Research outcome from investigations suggested
  that Bright Star children scored higher than did
  the comparison children not only in the
  pre-teaching phase but also in the post-teaching
  phase
• In English BS children demonstrated greater
  benefit from mediated instruction

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Problems with DA

• NEW
• Metric (measuring) problems
• Reliability because the process sets out to
  change the very learning characteristics that are
  being assessed
• Validity subjects and approaches change in
  unique and unpredictable fashion

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• DA not taught in certification programs or
  graduate assessment courses
• Requires intensive training and practice
• Hard to do, time consuming and (at first) not
  liked by examiner nor examinee
• Resistance to change from what we already do

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Examples of Mediated Instruction

• Intervention in the learning task of another that
  results is transfer of what is learned and now
  understood to what was already know and in a
  usable way. Mediated learning hooks new things
  learned to old things already known and
  understood.

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Examples

• Your mother and fatherand all the things they
  taught yousmileand are still trying to get
  across
• Instructions with associated video tape that lead
  to assembly of your recently purchased Char
  Broiler Grill
• Mediated instruction requires active interaction,
  communication, strategy selection, the behavior
  and related evaluation

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• The thousands of time you have interacted with a
  learner in your classroom, leading the subject to
  step-wise processing and success. EX long
  division
• Some real time examples

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Solve these problems

• Jane has 6 fewer dimes today than she had
  yesterday. If she had 12 dimes yesterday, how
  many dimes does Jane have today?

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• Determine the number of Modos in a game of
  Boboball if there are 20 Hodos, there are 8
  fewer Modos than Hodos, and there are 82 players
  in all.
•  

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• Dave gave Charlotte half of his pogs. Charlotte
  gave Jonnie half of the pogs she received from
  Dave. Jonnie kept 8 of those pogs and gave the
  remaining 10 to Dana. How many pogs did Dave
  give Charlotte?

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Dynamic Assessment A Cognitive Approach to
Instruction of Individuals with Special Learning
Needs
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Cognitive Model (IPP)

• Information Processing Paradigm
• Input
• Process
• Output

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• Input through attention to Short Term Memory
• Large amount of date taken in
• Vision often our favorite tool
• Data recorded as photographs
• Detail limited
• Picture a large funnel

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• Process to Working Memory
• Working memory limited
• One bit at a time
• The small end of a funnel
• Decisions regarding what to keep and what to
  release
• What photographs go in the album (schemata)

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• Long term memory
• Unlimited read-able and write-able storage
• Organized according to existing photo albums (a
  new album or sub-album may be required)
• What we already know retained (LTM)
• Can be fetched if album location known
• Dynamic-always under reconstruction

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• Executive Control Intellect
• The CEO
• Responsible for system decisions
• Limited by experience, training, insult, injury
  and/or disease
• Strategy orientation-stepwise in nature
• A significantly critical element in cognition

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Executive Control Function(ECF)

• Human store traces of earlier cognitive acts, not
  the products. Pictures are not just drug out in
  tact, but fragments of such are used to support
  new construction.
• Retrieval of information is directed by executive
  routines or mental activities the order of which
  is governed by ECF

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Stages of Information Processing

• Encoding matching pictures to know photos
• Elaboration making connections to know photos
• Transformation applying rules to know photos
• Storage addition of pictures to photo album
• Retrieval finding previously stored photos
• Searching assessing photos for properties
• Comparing photos are either old or new
• Reconstruction modification of photo collection

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• Knowledge systems
• Declarative (shared factual information) unique
  learners appear like but different in extent to
  normally achieving peers.
• Procedural (how to knowledge)
  proceduralization and compositional strategies
  appear limited in unique learners
• Conditional (knowing when to use strategies or
  acquired information) executive control models
  appear limited in unique learners.

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The Main Concepts

• Leaning is active not passive
• Shift from product to process
• Most important thing to know about a learner is
  what he/she already knows
• Watch learner learn

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• Watch learner monitor
• Develop Talk Aloud Protocol
• Develop Cognitive Portfolio

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Who Are Those Guys

• Perceptual-motor or psychological process model
  (cracked kid syndrome)
• Medical model-rooted in work with brain-injured
  and still a possibility
• Behavioral
• Ability deficit, then skill deficit, finally
  inactive kid

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Types of Strategy Based Learners

• Strategy Efficient solve problem to mastery
• Strategy Inefficient demonstrates some strategy
  selection and problem movement but farklesat
  some point in task steps and fails to reach
  mastery
• Strategy Deficient no clue..no start..no mastery

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Strategy Deficient Learners(SDL)

• SDL appears to
• utilize inappropriate strategy selection
• demonstrate ineffective strategy execution
• Useful information must be linked to prior
  knowledge
• SDL does not elaborate material spontaneously
  nor develops short definitional information

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• Leaning disabilities may be the result of complex
  multiple processes including strategy
  inappropriateness, higher-order activities (ECF)
  and inefficient retrieval constructs. It is not
  just an inability to spell, read or do
  mathematical calculations.

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Photo Album Model

• Learning a reasonable permanent change in
  behavior behavior not explained by organic states
  or conditions.

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Input Taken Rolls of Pictures

• Input date taken in through human receptors
• see, hear, smell, taste and touch
• Taking photographs

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Short Term Memory Which Pictures to Keep?

• Executive Control System must decide what to keep
  and then discard
• What photographs will I keep?

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Working Memory Fetch Albums I Have
Accumulated(schema)

• What Albums do I have that contain similar
  photographs
• Fetch them (scratch pad memory)
• Compare and contrasts present and new pictures

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Long Term Memory My Own Album Collection

• Family pets my first dog, cat, fish-will include
  all family pets and information concerning that
  subject
• Organized into cognitive model

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A Real Time model

• Think of the knowledge systems and long-term
  memory as the contents of photo albums you have.
  (children, pets, trips)
• Recall the stages of development used to
  construct these albums.
• Think of newly added pictures and those that are
  worn and faded from time.

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Memory

• From the sensory registers, information is
  transferred into limited-capacity short-term
  memory to decay unless elaborated.
• Long-term memory is permanent storage with
  unlimited capacity. Information is stored by use
  of links, associations and general organizational
  plans, is semantic and decays because of loss or
  interference.

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Working Memory

• Much more dynamic than short-term memory while
  sharing some of the same characteristics.
• Working memory is an active process that involves
  the mental activities leading to long-term memory
  store. (Photo development, organization and
  glue-up)

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• Organizational strategies to long-term memory
• chunkinggrouping for completing of a series of
  items
• clustering organization into categories
• mnemonics GBDFA and HOMES
• coding images and pictures for words

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Learning Disabilities and Strategy
Inappropriateness

• Focus is placed on what is modifiable
• Rule creating and metacogntive models
• Environmental factors dictate strategy selection
  and use
• Active rather that passive interaction with pupil
• Maximize strategy use through instruction

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Principles of Strategy Instruction

• Strategies serve different purposes
• Strategies must operate on the law of parsimony
  (reduced to simplest order)
• Effective strategies for student without learning
  disabilities are not not necessarily good for
  students with learning disabilities.
• Strategy instruction does not eliminate
  processing differences

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• Strategies must be considered in relation to a
  students knowledge base and capacity.
• Comparative strategy use may not eliminate
  performance differences.
• Strategies taught do not necessary become
  transformed into expert strategies.

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• Where to begin?
• Six elements of Think-Aloud Protocol
• task to be accomplished
• instructional procedures and material
• specific strategy(s) ltrulesgt will be used by
  student
• strategy management technique to be taught
• outcome of training
• Statement for Cognitive Portfolio

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Think-Aloud Questions

• How would you start to solve this problem?
• Do you have a plan?
• Why do you think that approach will work?
• How will you tell if your plan is working?
• What were you thinking then?
• Can you think of another way to do that?

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• A variety of learning situations must be observed
  to form a generalization concerning strategy
  ability.
• A picture begins to form of the strategy
  capabilities of the student and effective ways to
  approach and facilitate instruction.

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Cognitive Portfolio

• Case specific and subject specific observations
  through Think-Aloud Protocol
• Determination of strategy usage and
  appropriateness
• Methods of instruction selected by the teacher,
  learning environment or school district
  concerning content remain in tact

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• If cognitive data is collected each year by the
  instructional and diagnostic staff, a compressive
  picture of the learner forms and is available for
  future placement.
• This model requires complete commitment board
  level, administration, diagnostic teams,
  instruction and parent.
• Pre-service and in-service training will be
  required for all players.

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The Bottom Line

• Learning disabilities, at best, has no single
  cause to treat and each individual is unique unto
  his/her own cognitive needs.
• In order to function in an included setting, this
  individual requires instructional models that
  allow for independent and successful outcomes in
  school.