As the developer of TRICOAST Education’s Curriculum-Based Dynamic Assessment, one of the most frequent questions I receive is, “What’s the difference between traditional assessments and dynamic assessments?” I always enjoy answering this question because it helps explain these concepts to professionals who mainly use traditional assessments in their schools or clinical practice and provide a learning opportunity for them new to learn about educational and clinical assessments.
Traditional (Static) Assessments
When most people think of assessments, they picture a child taking a test with set questions, while the examiner simply follows a script without providing help. These are called "static" assessments because they don't change or adapt for different children. They are standardized tests that measure a child’s abilities at one specific moment in time. The focus is on giving every child the exact same test experience to ensure fair scoring. This is meant to guarantee fairness and consistency in scoring and interpretation of the results.
Normed-Referenced Assessments
Many static assessments compare a child’s performance to a large group of similar-aged children (the "norming group"), hence the name normed-referenced. This means a child’s performance is compared to a large sample of children representing the general population. This creates challenges when assessing children from linguistic and cultural backgrounds that are different than the majority of the norming group. For example, many language assessments are normed on exclusively English-only speakers from developed countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK.
Consider a child who recently moved to Canada from the Philippines, speaks Tagalog (Filipino) as a first language, and is learning English as a second language at school. If this child takes a popular diagnostic narrative assessment like the Test of Narrative Language-2nd edition (TNL-2, Gillam & Pearson, 2017), which was normed on English monolingual children from the United States, the norming data may not represent the abilities of the Filipino child. Consequently, the child may not perform to the age-expected standard and therefore, be categorized as having development language disorder according to the assessment.
Using assessments on children who are not part of the majority group in the norming sample can lead to biased results. In these cases, a child's poor performance may not indicate a true struggle but rather reflect that the test was not designed with their linguistic or cultural background in mind. This can result in the misidentification of language disorders, such as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), when the lower scores may simply be due to the child learning English as a second language.
Criterion-Referenced Assessments
In contrast, criterion-referenced assessments evaluate children on specific skills rather than comparing them to other children. The goal is to see if the child has mastered these skills. Criterion-referenced assessments can be valid and reliable if the test items are unbiased, and all assessors agree on their meanings and interpretations (Dunn et al., 2002). However, designing such assessments to be fair to all populations is challenging, time consuming, and costly.
Can Static Assessments Be Culturally Sensitive?
For norm-referenced assessments to be culturally sensitive, the norming sample must include enough children from the same age, culture, language, and educational background as the child being assessed. While this is possible, designing and implementing criteria that are fair and do not disadvantage one population over another can be quite challenging.
Criterion-referenced assessments can be culturally sensitive if the test items are unbiased and consistently interpreted in the same manner. One way to use criterion-referenced assessments effectively is for progress monitoring. Educators can assess a child, provide instruction, and then reassess to measure progress. This method focuses on skill mastery rather than comparing the child to others. However, the relevance of the skills assessed may vary across cultures, languages, and school curricula.
Now that we know what static assessments are….
how are dynamic assessments different?
Dynamic Assessments: The Test-Teach-Test Approach
Dynamic assessments work differently. They are designed to measure not only a learner’s current language proficiency but mainly their learning potential. They look at both what a child knows now and how well they can learn new things when given support. The process has three steps:
1. Pre-test: Assess a child’s current abilities and determine which skills to teach.
2. Teaching session: Provide targeted support through teaching strategies (we call this "mediation").
3. Post-test: Assess the child’s pre-to-post changes.
The most important part of the dynamic assessment process happens during the teaching phase. Here, we can identify how a child learns and measure their learning potential, helping us tell the difference between children who are typically developing in language and those who might need extra support.
How Do Dynamic Assessments Compare To Static Assessments?
What does research say about these differences?
Measures: Dynamic assessments measure HOW the child learns. Static assessments measure WHAT the child knows (Nazari, 2024).
Flexibility: Dynamic assessments offer greater flexibility compared to static assessments, as they can adapt to each child’s responses (Miller et al., 2001). They can also be adapted to the child’s interests and motivations, such as topics and strategies (Laurie & Pesco, 2024).
Personalization: Dynamic assessments allow for a more personalized approach by offering tailored instruction and feedback, whereas static assessments may not address individual learner needs as effectively (Hasson, 2018).
Engagement: Dynamic assessments tend to be more engaging for learners due to their interactive nature and focus on the learning process, while the examiner is passive and neutral in statics assessments (Miller et al., 2001). Due to the engaging nature of this approach, children don’t often feel they are being assessed as they are learning skills based on their needs and interests (Laurie & Pesco, 2024).
Accuracy: Dynamic assessments provide a comprehensive understanding of learning potential and progress while static assessments provide a snapshot of a child's abilities at a particular moment. Dynamic assessments also allow assessors to more accurately determine whether a child from a diverse background has DLD or not. Traditional assessments are often invalid and unreliable for such populations (Hunt et al., 2022).
Time: Dynamic assessments may require more time and resources compared to static assessments. However, the assessor can collect valuable quantitative and qualitative information that traditional assessments cannot obtain and measure, often rendering the extra effort worthwhile (Haywood & Lidz, 2007).
In Summary
While static assessments provide a standardized snapshot of a child’s abilities at a specific moment, comparing them to a set standard or norming sample, dynamic assessments take a more interactive and personalized approach, offering a deeper understanding of the child’s learning potential and process. This wealth of information is far more valuable in identifying the child’s learning needs in and out of the classroom.
At TRICOAST Education, we believe every child has the potential to learn, grow, and thrive regardless of their background or starting point. Traditional assessments may tell us what a child knows, but they don’t reveal how a child learns. This is where our Curriculum-Based Dynamic Assessment (CBDA) platform makes all the difference.
By shifting from a static testing to a dynamic, interactive approach, we uncover each child's unique learning process, identify their strengths, and tailor support to help them reach their full potential. Our mission is to create a more inclusive, accurate, and meaningful way to assess learning—one that empowers educators, clinicians, and, most importantly, the children themselves.
If you're passionate about unlocking learning potential and embracing a more holistic, research-backed approach to assessment, we invite you to connect with us. Explore how CBDA can revolutionize your practice and ensure every child receives the support they truly need.
Get in touch with us today to learn more at info@tricoasteducation.com
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References
Dunn, L., Parry, S., & Morgan, C. (2002). Seeking quality in criterion referenced assessment. In Learning Communities and Assessment Cultures Conference organised by the EARLI Special Interest Group on Assessment and Evaluation. University of Northumbria.
Gillam, R. B., & Pearson, N. (2017). Test of Narrative Language-Second Edition. Pro Ed.
Hasson, N. (2018). The dynamic assessment of language learning. Routledge.
Haywood, H. C., & Lidz, C. S. (2007). Dynamic assessment in practice: Clinical and educational applications. Cambridge University Press.
Hunt, E., Nang, C., Meldrum, S., & Armstrong, E. (2022). Can dynamic assessment identify language disorder in multilingual children? Clinical applications from a systematic review. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 53(2), 598–625. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_LSHSS-21-00094
Laurie, A. & Pesco, D. (2024). Dynamic assessment of narratives: Case studies of bilingual Filipino kindergarteners with language difficulties. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 40(1), 24-38. https://doi.org/10.1177/02656590241228420
Miller, L., Gillam, R., & Peña, E. (2001). Dynamic assessment and intervention: Improving children’s narrative abilities. PRO-ED.
Nazari, O. (2024). Complementary Relationship Between Dynamic Assessment and Traditional Testing. Journal of Applied Linguistics Studies, 3(2), 64-70. https://sanad.iau.ir/Journal/jals/Article/999926
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