جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « dynamic assessment » در نشریات گروه « علوم انسانی »

Teachers play a pivotal role in the instruction-assessment process. Knowing EFL teachers’ conceptualizations of the role of assessment as well as their own role in the implementation of assessment is very critical. Accordingly, the current study aimed to compare Iranian EFL public high school teachers’ literacy and perceptions of dynamic assessment with those of English language institute teachers. In so doing, 45 (23 high school, 22 institute) English teachers, teaching in Lahijan, Iran were selected according to convenience sampling method. The teachers were invited to cooperate and participate in the study and fill out the questionnaire sent via social network like WhatsApp and Telegram. In addition, nine teachers (five high school, four institute teachers) were selected through purposive sampling to participate in a semi-structured interview with five questions posed through the above-mentioned social networks. A researcher-adapted questionnaire with 23 items in a Likert-type scale was utilized to collect data. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were achieved through experts’ opinion and Cronbach Alpha, respectively. Having collected the data, descriptive and inferential statistics of the findings showed that although both groups of teachers had a realistic view about the application of dynamic assessment due to its practicality and social acceptance, the teachers in two different contexts of teaching had different rates of literacy and perceptions of dynamic assessment. Furthermore, the difference in the two groups of teachers’ perceptions of dynamic assessment practicality was significantly different. The institute teachers enjoyed a higher average of both literacy and perceptions of dynamic assessment practicality in their classrooms. This study echoes the teachers’ voices, and as in the wake of new forms of curricular policy in many parts of the world, teachers are increasingly required to be agents of change that would hopefully encourage change at the discipline and in the institutional level.

The present study explored the effects of interactionist Dynamic Assessment (DA) and age on the writing accuracy of IELTS candidates. This research investigated the existence of an interactional effect between the age of learners and the type of treatment they received. First, 140 IELTS candidates were split into two age groups, adult and young. Each group was divided into two equal smaller groups, randomly assigned to two types of DA. All four groups took a writing pre-test. After a nine-session treatment of interactionist DA in study groups and interventionist DA in control groups, all groups took a writing post-test. The data collected during the post-test were analyzed by two-way ANOVA and compared with the pre-test data. The findings showed that implementation of interactionist DA significantly improved the learners’ writing accuracy while the learners’ age had no significant effect on their writing accuracy. With respect to the study findings, EFL teachers could use interactionist DA to enhance the accuracy of learners' writing skills by providing more opportunities for the learners to interact.

Reducing anxiety in foreign language learning has long been a concern for many teachers. This study focused on exploring the effects of three dynamic assessment models on L2 speaking and listening anxiety. The participants were 120 pre-intermediate Iranian learners of English at a language institute in Qazvin, Iran. The learners were randomly assigned to four groups (three experimental groups and one control group). Before the treatment, the students’ homogeneity was checked using Oxford Placement Test (OPT). Then, all the groups were given listening and speaking anxiety questionnaires as pretests. During 10 sessions, the first group received listening and speaking instruction using Buddof’s Learning Potential Measurement Approach (LPM); the second group was treated with Guthke’s Lerntest Approach; the third group was treated with Testing-the-Limits Approach.  Lastly, the control group was taught conventionally in a teacher-fronted way.  The same questionnaires were given to the participants in the twelfth session as posttests. Data were analyzed using two one-way analysis of covariance procedures. Significant differences were found among the groups’ listening and speaking anxiety mean scores on the posttests after controlling for the initial differences. Those experimental groups that received testing-the-limits and Lerntest approaches had a lower level of listening and speaking anxiety on the posttest. It was concluded that employing dynamic assessment models can decrease speaking and listening anxiety among EFL learners and enhance their productivity. The findings can have important implications for students, teachers and materials designers.

This study aimed to explore the combined impacts of critical thinking and dynamic Assessment on enhancing the writing performance of Iranian EFL learners, specifically focusing on teaching writing strategies. We selected 80 intermediate-level participants from a pool of approximately 200 language learners at an accredited institute (Gooyesh). These participants were divided equally into two experimental and control groups. The experimental group (EG) received writing strategies through the application of critical thinking principles and dynamic assessment. The control group (CG) received writing strategies through traditional methods without receiving critical thinking or dynamic assessment principles. The two groups underwent a writing pre-test to assess their initial writing skills, and after the treatment, to measure their writing improvement, they took a post-test using the same evaluation criteria as those of the pre-test. Then, appropriate statistical tools were employed to gauge the participants' writing progress as a result of the instructional methods. The results indicated that integrating dynamic assessment and critical thinking strategies significantly improved participants' written communication skills. These findings hold promise for EFL instructors, curriculum designers, and material developers.

There have been different approaches to assess students’ learning in language teaching classes. Traditional standardized testing and dynamic assessment have been used in language classes. While traditional testing is considered a product-oriented approach, dynamic assessment is believed to focus on the process of learning and assist it. Existing literature is replete with different definitions of dynamic assessment. However, different attempts in defining dynamic assessment mainly contrast it with traditional testing. This has resulted in the conception that these two approaches are contradictory and their complementary relationship is not well acknowledged. This article, taking a postmodernist perspective, in general, chaotic/complexity view point in particular, and advocating a relativistic perspective, is an attempt to highlight the complementary relationship between these two approaches i.e., traditional testing and dynamic assessment. In so doing, it deals with defining and comparing these two approaches and considers two views on their relationship including their contradictory and complementary relationships.

This study was an attempt to find the impact of audio corrective feedback on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ writing improvement at micro and macro levels using static and dynamic assessment methods.

This study employs a quasi-experimental design; The study population comprises individuals residing in Yazd, Iran, aged between 22 and 30 years old, and possessing intermediate-level proficiency in the English language.Forty Iranian intermediate EFL learners were randomly chosen and assigned to two groups of static and dynamic assessment, each comprising 20 learners. Both groups received audio corrective feedback on the micro (grammatical range and accuracy and lexical resource) and macro (task response and coherence and cohesion) writing skills. The data were collected by the pre-test and post-test of writing and analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA).

The results revealed significant effects of audio corrective feedback on EFL learners' writing skills. Improvements were observed in grammatical accuracy (F = 12.45, p < 0.01), lexical resource (F = 9.67, p < 0.05), task response (F = 14.32, p < 0.01), and coherence and cohesion (F = 11.21, p < 0.01). Furthermore, comparison between the static and dynamic assessment groups showed a more pronounced improvement in the dynamic group, with significant differences in micro skills (F = 5.78, p < 0.05) and macro skills (F = 6.34, p < 0.05).

The results of this study indicate that the dynamic assessment approach had a statistically significant effect on enhancing both micro and macro-level writing skills among the participants. Notably, it had a more pronounced impact on the improvement of task response and grammatical range and accuracy. This highlights the potential of dynamic assessment as a valuable tool for educators and curriculum designers to promote more comprehensive writing skill development in Iranian EFL learners.

The term dynamic assessment (DA) refers to an assessment, by an active teaching process, of a child's perception, learning, thinking, and problem solving. Dynamic assessment (DA) is a kind of interactive assessment used in education. Dynamic assessment is a product of the research conducted by developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky. The term dynamic assessment refers to an assessment, by an active teaching process, of a child's perception, learning, thinking, and problem solving. The process is aimed at modifying an individual's cognitive functioning and observing subsequent changes in learning and problem-solving patterns within the testing situation. The goals of the DA are to: (a) assess the capacity of the child to grasp the principle underlying an initial problem and to solve it, (b) assess the nature and amount of investment (teaching) that is required to teach a child a given rule or principle, and (c) identify the specific deficient cognitive functions and non-intellective factors that are responsible for failure in performance and how modifiable they are as a result of teaching. DA is usually administered to children who demonstrate some learning disability, low scores on standardized tests, or some emotional or personality disturbance. The study was conducted based on three stages, inspired by the evident role of Dynamic Evaluation in changing traditional assessment in favor of students. Its goal was to investigate the impact of dynamic assessment on the IELTS writing performance of applicants. To that end, 28 IELTS candidates were selected to undergo the procedure of three Mediated Learning Experience components namely: Intentionality, Reciprocity, and Transcendence. T-test results showed that IELTS candidates who took part in dynamic assessments improved more than those who took part in nondynamic assessments. The Intelligent Essay Assessor TM (IEA) online scoring method was used in the second half of the study. Students were given 40 minutes to complete a writing assignment that appeared in their IEA electronic portfolios. Online feedback can help improve IELTS writing scores by identifying and correcting grammatical faults, but it has little effect on the length or organization of a piece of writing. A structured interview was used to elicit participants' thoughts and feelings about DA and online evaluation as part of the study's third component. Students' attitudes toward DA were very positive, with nearly unanimous agreement that online assessment was superior to the previous method and that it was more time efficient.

In this study, attempts were made to explore the impact of peer-assisted mediation and teacher intervention on the attitudes of Iranian intermediate English learners towards reading comprehension, within an intrusive dynamic assessment approach. For this purpose, 60 male language learners were selected and homogenized by applying the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) as the main participants of the study. They were randomly divided into three groups: Experimental group (GA), Peer mediation, Experimental group (GB), and Instructor intervention group (GC)—control group. An attitude questionnaire was administered to the participants in all three groups to collect the necessary data. Then the treatment started and lasted 12 sessions. Each group of participants received a specific treatment. The post-test was administered at the end of the treatment. Analysis of the results showed that peer-assisted mediation and teacher intervention in intrusive dynamic assessment had significant impacts on the reading comprehension attitudes of Iranian intermediate English learners. The findings of the study offered some pedagogical implications for language teachers and textbook developers.

Dynamic assessment (DA) is founded in Sociocultural Theory (SCT) of Vygotsky (1978) and his conception of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). It motivated the scholars to find a way from a static approach of assessment to the dynamic approach to increase individuals’ independence and level of performance (Lantolf & Poehner, 2004; Poehner, 2008). To this end, this investigation probed DA intervention on writing fluency and complexity of Iranian EFL learners. Before the treatment, the KET test was implemented for homogenizing the participants and then 36 learners were chosen in groups of namely, experimental and control (18 participants in every group). In both groups, learners wrote a one-paragraph essay in the first session. During the intervention which lasted for two sessions, the researcher followed some stages including implicit and explicit feedback types in the second and third sessions to help learners move from teacher-regulation to self-regulation and then they wrote again a one-paragraph essay as the post-test in the fourth session. Participants in the control group wrote on the same topics as the experimental group, however, with no DA intervention. The researcher corrected their papers and provided some general comments in the control group. The t-tests in the post-tests indicated that experimental group surpassed the control group considerably concerning the writing fluency and complexity improvement. The paper concludes with a discussion and recommendations for further research into the potential DA contributions to EFL writing assessment and instruction.

The study aimed to investigate the application of Digital Literacy to Lexical and grammatical accuracy of Iranian EFL learners and determine whether dynamic assessors could benefit from the literacy. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the ways in which young students are developing computer and information literacy (CIL) to support their capacity to participate in the digital age. Further, this study explored the mediating role of teachers’ digital literacy between educational strategy use and dynamic assessment. The participants of the study, 230 young adult-male and female EFL teachers aged between 22 to 42 years old at different language institutes in several cities of Mazandaran province, Iran, were selected based on a snowball sampling method and were delivered two questionnaires. Following a multiple case study design to addresses the characteristics, and major cases of strategy use for teachers. Therefore, the paper used qualitative methods to gather data. The major advantage of multiple case research lies in cross-case analysis and changes the focus from realizing a single case to the differences and similarities between views. Finally, the results revealed that the social practices of literacy change due to the use of digital technologies. The findings provide further attitude into understanding how to probe the purposes where they have been formed and used in conceptualizing digital literacy

This study was undertaken to investigate the accountability of implementing dynamic assessment (DA) on Iranian high school students’ autonomy and reading comprehension development. To this end, 60 Iranian male students from two public vocational high schools in Guilan, Sowme’eh Sara took part in this study. To gather the required data, two instruments were used including an autonomy questionnaire and a reading comprehension test. To conduct the study, the participants were divided into two groups: an experimental group (N=30) and a control group (N=30). Before the academic term, the pre-tests (autonomy and reading) were administered. Then, during the academic term, the experimental group was exposed to a sandwich format dynamic assessment which consists of three phases: pre-test, mediation, and post-test. The control group was exposed to conventional teaching practice. After ending the academic term, the post-tests (autonomy and reading) were administered again. The driven data through pre-and post-tests of this study were analyzed through SPSS software. The results of the study indicated that implementing DA had a statistically significant effect on Iranian high school students’ autonomy and reading skill development. This study has some implications for EFL teachers, students, and language syllabus designers.

Teachers' continuing professional development (CPD) is currently an engrossing area worldwide. Nevertheless, despite the growing range of literature concentrating on certain aspects of CPD, there is a paucity of literature addressing a measurement scale to know where teachers are standing and act as a motivating role. The purpose of this study was to construct and validate a new scale for measuring EFL Teachers' CPD. This scale is considered pristine because of the added characteristics of Dynamic Assessment (DA) as another aspect of improving teachers' CPD. The present study further sought to establish the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, as well as add more value and precision to the pre-existing inventories available. Moreover, in this study, the developed scale was validated through piloting the items, and the factor analysis confirmed the five-factor questionnaire. With reference to the final results, the questionnaire was found to be reliable, having internal consistency by performing Cronbach's Alpha analysis. Cronbach's alpha of .91 indicated a high internal consistency. The CPD questionnaire was validated via exploratory factor analysis to establish a new validated scale to evaluate teachers' current level of CPD. The results are discussed in the context of language teaching, and based on that, authorities and administrators should be attentive to the results. Future studies can use a mixed-method approach to evaluate teachers’ CPD by employing a questionnaire and interviews.

The main focus of this article is on the controversial issue of integrating English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) into English Language Teaching (ELT). Particularly, the plurilithic nature of English as an international language in the age of Globalization challenges the long sedimented native-speakerism in the English classroom. Nevertheless, in spite of the extensive academic literature in the area of ELF research, it seems that a balanced pedagogical approach has not yet been developed by applied ELF scholars. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to show how Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (SCT) and Gal’perin’s Systemic Theoretical Instruction (STI) (which informed the L2 teaching approach called Concept-based Language Instruction, C-BLI) may provide the appropriate scientific framework to bridge the gap between the mainstream English as a Foreign Language (EFL) syllabus, that is based on the native-speaker Standard English model, and the emergent use of non-native-speaker ELF, which results from the contact of learners’ L1 and English. In conclusion, this research intends to propose an integrated approach to teaching English that combines ELF, SCT, and C-BLI. This is expected to give language teachers a conceptual framework and theoretical orientation to carry out the paradigm shift in ELT that most ELF scholars advocate.

This quasi-experimental study aimed to investigate the effects of dynamic assessment employed by teachers on promoting Iranian EFL learners’ stances in academic writing. For this purpose, three intact writing classes were selected by convenience sampling from BA students of English translation at Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University. The Quick Oxford Placement Test (QOPT) was administered to them, and those whose scores matched the intermediate band score of QOPT were selected. In general, 35 homogeneous students were selected from each class and randomly assigned into two experimental groups and one control group. A writing test was administered to all groups as the pre-test at the onset of the semester. The experimental groups were taught by the researcher and passed five different quizzes during the semester. The three groups were post-tested at the end of the semester. The results illustrated that both teacher and peers’ dynamic assessment effectively improved Iranian EFL learners’ stance in academic writing.

Simultaneous evaluation of the impact of different types of dynamic assessment on EFL learners' listening comprehension has never been conducted as far as the related literature discloses. Most of the studies connected with the dynamic assessment and various language skills have focused on speaking and writing performance. The present qualitative study aimed to examine Iranian EFL learners' attitudes toward the application of three models of dynamic assessment; namely, Interactionist Dynamic Assessment (I-DA), Group Dynamic Assessment (G-DA), and Computerized Dynamic Assessment (C-DA to Listening Comprehension Instruction. For this purpose, the Preliminary English Test (PET) was administered to 140 Iranian EFL female learners in four English Language Institutes in Ahvaz, Iran, who were chosen through availability sampling, and 80 of them were selected as homogeneous participants of the study. Then, they were given a perception questionnaire intended to elicit their insights about applying the different types of dynamic assessment. Three parallel questionnaires were constructed, each consisting of 15 items, and asking the learners about the efficacy of interactionist dynamic assessment in the I-DA group, group dynamic assessment in the G-DA group, and computerized dynamic assessment in the C-DA group. The descriptive analysis of the respondents' answers revealed that the degree of the IDA, GDA, and CDA learners' positive attitudes towards the application of DA reached statistical significance. This finding implies that EFL teachers may need to deliberate on the positive influence of different dynamic assessment models on EFL learners' listening comprehension improvement and, therefore, provide them with more opportunities to interact.

Over the past decades, writing assessment research has been concentrating on alternative methods with a social-oriented view of assessment, including dynamic assessment (DA). Given the lack of research juxtaposing the interventionist and interactionist DA frameworks in the area of narrative writing, this study sought to compare the effectiveness of Brown’s graduated prompts model vs. Poehner’s model in the development of one-paragraph narrative essays in terms of grammatical accuracy. The study followed a quasi-experimental design, with 15 Iranian EFL learners selected via convenient sampling from among the female students of a language institute in Tehran. The participants were then randomly divided into three groups: Interventionist group, in which mediation was based on Brown’s model in the sandwich format; interactionist group, where mediation was done using Poehner’s model in the cake format; and non-dynamic assessment (NDA) control group with no mediation involved. The research consisted of three pilot sessions and eleven sessions as the main phase. To analyze the data, both descriptive and non-parametric inferential statistics were run. The results conceded the superiority of both DA approaches to NDA, whereas no significant difference was observed between the two DA groups in their general performance on narrative tasks. However, the analysis of the number and types of required mediational moves over the DA sessions indicated the superiority of the interactionist model to interventionist framework in the development of grammatical accuracy in narrative paragraphs. The study offers some theoretical and pedagogical repercussions for educators, curriculum designers, and L2 teachers.

The present study tries to explore psycho-dynamics of Iranian EFL learners under the functions of dynamic assessment intervention modalities (i.e., facilitative vs. authoritative) modalities in developing their writing skills. To this end, this qualitative study ran on the basis of semi-structured interviews and written protocols data collected from 120 Iranian advanced EFL learners was designed to elicit an in-depth understanding of the participants’ thoughts during performing writing tasks. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data from both sources (i.e., interviews and written protocols) revealed that: 1) authoritative modality works more effectively in facilitating the processes of opinion expression and effective revision and correction, 2) facilitative modality contributes more to developing critical and reflective thinking processes while writing. In the light of the facilitative modality, the learners can easily switch from their individualistic focus to a collaborative culture among teachers and learners. So, the learners become more self-regulated and can move from object-regulation through other-regulation towards self-regulation. Then, EFL learners’ psycho-dynamic actions are a function of DA-modalities. The findings offer theoretical and pedagogical insights for both researchers and practitioners in addressing language learning and learners.

The present study aimed to assess the effects of written corrective feedback (WCF) on Iranian EFL learners' writing at the macro (i.e., rhetorical organization, task response, cohesion, and coherence) and micro levels (i.e., lexical resource, punctuation, grammatical range, and accuracy) with a dynamic assessment approach in focus. To this end, the Oxford Quick Placement Test was administered to 150 male and female Iranian EFL learners, of whom 80 homogeneous intermediate learners were selected and assigned to an experimental group and a control group. The two groups received WCF in the sense that the teacher provided symbols such as WW for the wrong word, SP for spelling, T for tense, WO for word order, etc. while marking their written productions. The difference was that the experimental group experienced dynamic assessment of L2 writing during the term (in which the teacher taught and tested the learners in an ongoing fashion and provided prompts, hints, support, and encouragement every session), whereas the participants in the control group experienced a conventional class, devoid of an ongoing dynamic assessment component. At the end of the treatment, the collected data were statistically analyzed. The results showed that although the experimental group significantly outpaced the control group regarding the micro-levels of writing, no substantial difference was detected between the macro levels of writing in both groups. It was, thus, concluded that written corrective feedback along with the dynamic assessment can significantly improve the writing of the students at micro-levels.

In comparison with the four main language skills, the writing skill has revealed that students are struggling with writing problems mainly due to ineffective feedback. Under the insights of Vygotsky's Socio-cultural Theory (SCT), DA intended to combine instruction and assessment and warrant both instruction and feedback quality. The present quasi-experimental study tried to investigate the effectiveness of the interventionist DA modalities (i.e., authoritative and facilitative) in developing the writing revision types of a sample of 120 advanced Iranian EFL learners in the form of two experimental and one control group. They produced sample essays for both diagnostic and achievement purposes; but in the interim, each experimental group was exposed to specific DA-oriented interventions while the control group received its conventional non-dynamic mainstream of teaching writing revision types. Parametric statistical analyses (MANOVA and one-way ANOVA) run forurposes revealed interesting findings 1) significant differences among the three groups in favor of DA-interventions; 2) significant difference of facilitative-DA modality over authoritative-DA modality; 3) significant differences with regard to Addition Deletion, and Substitution, 4) but no differences between the control group and the experimental groups in ‘Permutation’ were detected.