Selection for technical training
Dynamic assessment of cognitive modifiability
LPAD with new immigrant students
Dynamic assessment of text comprehension

There seems to be a certain inherent contradiction between the goal of standard assessment and selection procedures and their means. The goal is usually to evaluate the candidates’ learning abilities and to gain information useful for more effective training. The means, however, are often limited to measuring the candidates’ current performance level......
Read more (Download Word Document)

Back to Top

Cognitive Modifiability: A Needed Perspective on Learning for the 21st Century

Reuven Feuerstein*
Louis H. Falik
An Historical Background to the Problem, Perspective, and Potential
The late part of the 20th century saw the development of cognitive psychology as the central model by which human behavior, on its various levels, could best be understood and eventually enhanced. The early emphasis, however, was on cognition as a global phenomena, referring to mental processes in a holistic way, with little attention paid to the more molecular components of its nature. In what follows, we will suggest a view which will look into certain critical aspects of human behavior which relate to the micro-elements of human behavior, and on particular mental acts. This will then serve as a point of departure for a constructivist approach to the cognitive processes, rather than perceiving cognition as something which is either generally present or absent from the repertoire of the psychological and mental behavior of the individual. This process-oriented approach will serve as the basis for the concept of cognitive modifiability considered in our theoretical framework as t he option for the structural change existing in all human beings, irrespective of its condition as a given moment in its existence.
To illustrate briefly the holistic approach to the mental act, we refer to the work of Piaget (1952;1959) in the area of cognitive development, reflected in his "conservation" studies. These include the conservation of matter, volume, weight, etc. Piaget, in looking for this particular characteristic in a developmental perspective, paid very little attention (if at all) to the fact that the conservation of matter, volume, horozontality, and other such variables within the individual' s perceptual experience cannot be conceived without a consideration of certain specific conditions, such as the gathering of data, engaging in comparative behavior, and the like. On the other hand, comparative behavior could not be conceived of without the registration of certain perceived and understood characteristics of the various objects to be compared. Thus, the end product "conservation" requires a perceptual activity which gathers the kind of information on the various dimensio ns which have to be used, and the mental act of comparison (among other necessary cognitive functions) establishes relations which will permit the learner to "conserve" certain elements across the perceived changes in certain dimensions.
The examples that illustrate this situation are numerous and well known in the Piagetan literature. We mention them in this context as presenting a paradigm for the typical way in which psychology in general and cognitive psychology in particular have ignored the molecular conditions of various mental operations, have ignored the processes which lead to these products, and focus on the end products which are carefully labeled and categorized into proper hierarchies.
Modern cognitive psychology, its advances and developments notwithstanding, has thus constructed tools--flowing from theory, into operational constructs, research designs, methods of assessment and intervention--oriented toward the products of thinking and learning, with very little readiness to take into account the components as well as the dynamics underlying the processes responsible for their production. Psychometric practices, for example, is the powerful orientation of this product-orie nted approach, and of the tendency to totally ignore in the evaluation of mental products the processes responsible for its evolvement. No wonder, then, that in the contexts of such an approach to assessment and evaluation modifiability has not been considered possible.
The clinical method used by Piaget was mostly oriented towards a more molar level of behavior, and the interpretation of the results was in the direction of stage-related maturationally determined changes in operational thinking. These changes, according to Piaget, were very little related to the mediational interaction between the growing child and the representative of the culture (a parent, a teacher, a sibling, etc.) who mediates the modalities of perceiving, registering, or acting upon th e reality. Learning was, and in many respects continues to be, viewed as primarily the product of a direct interaction between the individual, his/her maturational processes, and growing experience. Unfortunately, such an approach increases the tendency, in conceptualization and methodology, to view human development in relatively fixed, static, and predictable terms.
As will be seen in the following discussion, the theory of structural cognitive modifiability (SCM), and in particular the theory of mediated learning experience (MLE) frames cognitive psychology in a very different way. Change, defined as the adaptive propensity of the organism, not only is central to the definition of intelligence and its cognitive processes, but brings in a constructive view of intelligence and its modifiability. The role of such a theory is in today's world more than ever a vital necessity in response to the increasing need for the enhancement of human adaptability, and the readiness to adapt to the ever-changing conditions of life.
Creating the Conditions for Modifiability
The human being is governed by two coexisting but somewhat antagonistic needs: The need to be, or identity; and the need to live and grow, which implies the need for change. Identity is experienced as the need to "be what I was yesterday," and "to be forever what I am today." The need to grow and change is experienced through new elements coming into one’s repertoire, but may also be experienced as a source of conflict--"If I change too much I may not recognize my self," but "If I don’t change, will I feel as though I am alive?" In their most positive manifestations, the need to be speaks to the continuity of existence and is reflected in feelings of self, while the need to live and grow is occurs in the feeling of a sense of adaptation and the experience of being modified in some aspects of self.
We thus need environments where the self is recognized but is allowed (and stimulated) to change. We may ask whether the rapid pace of technological advancement, and the lack of stability in human values and relationships that accompany such rapid external change creates sufficient conditions for the necessary human modifiability which must accompany environmental change. More than ever, the technological and social demands of the coming century call upon us to identify the conditions that mak e environments conducive to allowing the human being to modify him or herself--to create a context of modifiability.
Certain critical dimensions of this condition can be identified:
(1) To the extent that social structures mitigate against meaningful and sustaining human relationships, the lack of a feeling of belonging (to a family, a culture, a community) is a source of stress in human experience. Environments must increase the experience of belonging to make the individual amenable to adaptation--to have the need and energetic propulsion toward modifiability.
(2) The environment must require the individual to adapt: to convey the importance and enable the experience of competence, to evoke attainable challenges, to require thinking and adaptive change in a context in which it is valued and encouraged, to create new modalities of adaptive functioning. An "over familiar" environment is not a source of change, it does not require the individual to adapt or renew one’s strategies ("if there is no need, why make the effort?"). T he environment must constantly require new adaptations.
(3) The individual must see him or herself as able to be modified--he or she can change. The environment must bring evidence that the individual can be modified, with an explicitly identified "credo" of modifiability.
(4) The nature and types of interactions in the environment must be conducive to making and sustaining change. Here we propose mediated learning experience (MLE) as the critical dynamic in producing this quality or change(see below).
(5) Lastly--and with important implications for educational settings and decision-making with regard to student learning--the environment must be heterogeneous, presenting a variety of models and differences in experience. The differences must be meaningful and facilitative of growth and change, and the individual must be prepared for them. If everyone in the environment shares the same characteristics there will be no models to observe and aspire to, no differentiation of possibilities and aw areness. The environment thus must pay attention to differences, to accept and prize diversity. This is necessary for learners at all levels of proficiency. The critical need in this dimension is the preparation--the planning for the entering and being of the different individual in the differentiated environment. This takes two forms: working with the individual who is different to prepare and sustain functioning (an "internal strategic need"), and working with the environment to crea te a system which is accepting and adaptive toward the differences (an "external" strategic need).
Without this focus, the adaptive propensities which are natural to the individual, and which can be manifested in varied and enhanced cognitive potential will not be realized. With it, we have the opportunity to materialize the functional potential of the individual, in the quality of his or her life, in the exposure to stimulation and adaptation of that experience to the needs, circumstances, and responsive requirements of existence. It is the potential of education, particularly through the focus on cognitive processes in learning, applying the necessary parameters of mediated learning experience (MLE), to change the destiny of individuals.
What is required is a belief in modifiability, but important as that is to energize and affect educational change, it is not enough. It is necessary to articulate the dimensions upon which change should be focused, in a systematic and operationalized conception of the process of change, such as we have proposed and developed in the SCM and its applied constructs of the Deficient Cognitive Functions and the Cognitive Map (Feuerstein, 1979; 1980). SCM requires that we understand the parameters o f human modifiability, the role that cognition plays in the process of modifiability, and the modalities by which changes can be produced.
The Belief in Modifiability
We believe that human beings are modifiable. Modifiability can be seen as a departure from the predicted course of development, manifested in changes that do not follow the natural sequences. Piaget’s developmental stages of the cognitive process are valuable descriptors, but his construction of stages and phases of development risks conveying the impression that these stages are inevitably age-linked, and sequentially rigid, blinding the observer to evidence and potential for modifiabili ty. In our view, much of the underlying cognitive process described in the Piagetian stages of development are in fact "unstable" states, subject to change, and the individual has remarkable capacities to integrate, assimilate, and acquire higher and differential levels of structure, with much less constriction due to factors of age and other causes (see below) than Piagetan students have assumed. Moreover, even the schemata that become part of the organism’s cognitive structure a re amenable to change.
These changes occur irrespective of the three traditional conditions that have been considered barriers to change: the cause of the condition, or its etiology; the critical period during which the condition is most salient, or its age of onset; and the severity of the condition as it impacts the individual. Some causes have been determined, or assumed, to be such that the individual experiencing them are not viewed as being amenable to change. For example, the critical period hypothesis takes the position that if certain skills or attributes are not achieved by certain defined (often arbitrary) time periods, little subsequent change or development can be anticipated. And of course, if a condition is severe, with extreme degrees of damage or impairment, than the expectation of change is minimized or abandoned. All of these positions, with many adherents in conventional theory and practice, and substantiated by rationales which are likely related to less implicit issues such as availab ility of financial resources, the existence of programs and institutions devoted to caring for those who are the "victims" of disabling conditions (be they exogenous or endogenous), lead to one conclusion--a passive acceptance of conditions of disability, dysfunction, limited potential for adaptation, and the like.
The belief in modifiability, on the other hand, argues for an active modificational approach. We make a central assumption about the brain--that it has a quality of plasticity. Changes in the brain are corollary to and consequent of changes in behavior, thinking, learning, and cognition. The human brain is shaped by behavior no less than behavior shapes the brain. The behavioral evidence, initially framed as a theoretical perspective by us and many others in the field, is now clearly supported by more and more empirical data from the fields of neurobiology, neurochemistry, physiology, etc. Modifiability is also observed in areas other than cognition--in mental states such as schizophrenia, in various conditions of mental retardation, motor functioning, and in a wide range of prospective behavioral repertoires, all of which have important implications for modifiability of the brain.
_________________________
The material for this paper is adapted and elaborated from lectures given by Professor Feuerstein at the 1999 Shoresh International Training Symposium, sponsored by the International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential, Jersualem, Israel

Download the complete paper

Back to Top

Preface by Prof. Reuven Feuerstein

The project reported here represents an attempt to overcome one of the major difficulties confronting new immigrants and their children. This difficulty stems from the static approach to evaluation that starts and finishes with the manifest level of immigrants’ functioning in linguistic, cognitive, conceptual, and operational spheres. This level of functioning is perceived as reflecting their true capacities which are fixed and unchangeable. The danger associated with such an approa ch materialized itself in the case of millions of immigrants who, due to this confusion between the manifest level of functioning and their true potential for change, were erroneously placed in special education frameworks, or in classes offering a very low type of vocational training. The training was far below their true aspirations and capacities, and in many cases way below the immigrants’ achievements in their country of origin.
The above-mentioned confusion is partly a result of the misunderstanding of such phenomena as cultural difference and cultural deprivation (these concepts are discussed in Part One of this Report). The culturally different individuals find themselves in a disadvantaged position while negotiating with a dominant culture to which they have to adapt. The culturally deprived individuals, who for a variety of reasons were unable to master the methods of transmission of their native culture, are at a double disadvantage: As the weak learners of their native culture and as culturally different in a new culture. Because of their double condition of cultural difference and cultural deprivation some of these individuals project an image of totally unsuitable for adaptation and unable to become part of a new culture. This danger is further increased by the stigma attached to the new immigrants through the use of the conventional IQ test procedures. These procedures created a scientific " proof" of the deficiencies observed in the behavior of immigrants confronted with the tasks belonging to a new culture to which they still have to adapt.

The condition of the immigrant Ethiopian population is characterized by the fact that in terms of cultural difference, their culture is very distant from the modern Israeli culture to which they had to adapt. This cultural difference is reciprocal, in the sense that representatives of the dominant Israeli culture do not usually have adequate knowledge to understand the immigrants’ way of thinking, their concepts, vocabulary, and levels of understanding which are so different and so str ange to those who must integrate them into the educational system. The Ethiopian immigrant students have puzzled many of our educators. On the one hand, upon their initial interaction with the Israeli educational system, many of the students were a source of amazement and enthusiasm to a large number of their teachers as they showed an incredible capacity and motivation to learn. The immigrant students’ capacity to focus on and persevere in their work on tasks accessible to them allowed f or the hope that they would indeed be able to benefit from the educational system as they were. As a result, many educators began to think that there was no need for a type of special educational intervention beyond exposure to Hebrew.

This initial experience created a kind of positive stereotype of an Ethiopian student as a spontaneous learner who did not need any special support for complete integration and success within the educational system. It was presumed that the new immigrant students would be able to benefit in a direct and unmediated way from exposure to the dominant culture.

Many of the new immigrant children were indeed ready to absorb the new culture but were lacking the necessary tools - both conceptual and linguistic. Some of these cognitive tools were absent in their native culture and some seemed irrelevant. Suddenly, it became clear that they could not succeed without these tools. There was no doubt to many educators that they were dealing with a population that could learn. Yet when teachers saw that new immigrant children showed resistance to learning more complex forms of text comprehension, mathematical and scientific concepts, and problem-solving techniques, the positive stereotype was changed to a negative one, which in certain cases could have been extremely damaging to these children. Indeed, many of the teachers who were previously exalted by the possibilities of new immigrant students became skeptical. Once confronted with the students’ resistance to use what they had learned as a step towards further development, the teachers began questioning the ability of these children to modify themselves and acquire higher mental functions and operations necessary for scientific thinking, higher levels of verbal expression, and learning. As a result of such an attitude many of the new immigrant children faced the danger of being placed in special education frameworks, or alternatively, teachers created such low expectations for them within the normal educational settings that the students could not hope for real progress.

Both dangers were imminent and it was at this point that we at the ICELP alerted those responsible for the absorption - notably the Department of Youth Aliyah of the Jewish Agency at the initial stage, and later the Ministry of Education and the Department of Immigrant Absorption - to the need to create a more reliable image of these children, their deficiencies and their repertoire of functioning. The ultimate goal of such an evaluation was to identify those areas and types of intervention n ecessary to make the children’s strength become meaningful for their adaptation and integration into the educational as well as the social framework. It was at this point in 1985 that we first asked Youth Aliyah to allow us to examine 2,000 youngsters who were then at the beginning of their educational integration process in order to do away with both stereotypes, namely that the new immigrant students are so adaptable that they do not need any special help, or that they are such poor lear ners that no intervention would help them. The results of our assessment of several hundred students (see Part One of this Report) started presenting a more balanced profile of the students’ capacities, weaknesses, of their existing behavioral repertoire and of the missing elements in functioning. This approach based on the theory and technique of dynamic cognitive assessment permitted us to create conditions that alleviate dangers facing immigrant children and adults all over the world. T his approach enabled us to make sure that hundreds, if not thousands of children who might otherwise be referred to a special education or low level regular programs, receive proper intervention allowing them to continue their education on a high level and ultimately reach a high position in their new country.

We would like to stress that the problem of cultural difference of Ethiopian immigrants cannot really be resolved other than by demonstrating that there is no contradiction between the perpetuation of one’s native culture and attaining excellence in the new culture. The abandonment of one’s native culture in favor of total assimilation has a detrimental effect on the new immigrant community, creating a generation gap, weakening the family, and so on. The only way to make the new im migrant children and adults feel that being different does not affect their integration into society is to provide them with the tools helping them to act on an equal basis in the society as contributive members and valued producers of culture and science. If many of the immigrant children need cognitive intervention, then Ethiopian children need it even more. All efforts have to be made to endow Ethiopian children with excellence in their cognitive functioning so that they will be able to fun ction on par with any other member of the Israeli society.

In this Report we continue presenting results of our work with new immigrant children. This work has received vital support from the Jewish Agency and funds placed at the Agency’s disposal by the US grant for refugee resettlement. These contributions have enabled us to literally save hundreds of new children from a destiny that is unfortunately typical of many refugees, especially those who are as culturally different as the Ethiopians.

Download The Entire Report

Back to Top

Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension of At-Risk Students
Alex Kozulin* Erica Garb
ICELP, Jerusalem Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Paper presented at the 9th Conference of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction
Fribourg, Switzerland

August 2001

Dynamic vs. Static Assessment
There seems to be a certain inherent contradiction between the goals of student assessment and its means. The goal is usually to evaluate the students’ learning ability and to gain information useful for more effective instruction. The means, however, are often limited to measuring the students’ current performance level. This contradiction was identified as early as 1934 by Vygotsky (1934/1986; see also Minick 1987, Kozulin, 1998). Vygotsky believed that the normal learning situa tion for a student is a socially meaningful cooperative activity. New cognitive functions and learning abilities originate within this interpersonal interaction and only later are they internalized and transformed becoming the student’s inner cognitive processes. Thus under conditions of collaborative or assisted performance students may reveal certain emergent functions that have not yet been internalized yet. According to Vygotsky these functions belong to the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in counter-distinction to fully developed functions that belong to the zone of actual development. While the results of the static assessment show us the already existent abilities of the student, the analysis of ZPD allows us to evaluate the ability of the student to learn from the interaction with a teacher or a more competent peer. This learning ability may serve as a better predictor of the students’ educational needs than the static scores. Vygotsky mentioned the whole range of possible interactive interventions to be used during ZPD assessment, such as asking leading questions, modeling, starting to solve the tasks and asking students to continue, and so on, but he produced no standardized procedure for the ZPD assessment. Vygotsky also made no particular distinction between ZPD assessment of general cognitive functions and ZPD assessment in content-based learning areas.
The first fully operationalized programs for dynamic assessment of general cognitive functions were developed by Budoff in the US and by Feuerstein in Israel ( see Lidz, 1987). Budoff perceived dynamic assessment as a better tool for classification of students and prediction of their future achievements. Feuerstein claimed that the goal of dynamic assessment is to discover and actualize the students’ propensity toward cognitive change ( Kozulin and Falik, 1995). Currently a wide variety of dynamic cognitive assessment procedures is available. What unites all those approaches is their reliance on test-teach-test paradigm, what distinguishes between them is the nature of "teaching" that occurs between pre- and post-tests (Campione 1996; Haywood and Tzuriel, 1992; Lidz and Elliott, 2000).
Some of the dynamic assessments use a highly standardized sequence of cues during the teaching phase, while others (e.g. Feuerstein et al, 1979) are more flexible and interactive offering different types of mediation depending on specific needs revealed by the student during the assessment. In what concerns the testing materials themselves these usually resemble such standard psychometric tasks as Raven’s matrices, numerical or symbolic progressions, Koh’s cubes, and so on. T he tasks for dynamic cognitive assessment are selected in such a way that they tap into more flexible, so-called "fluid" aspects of cognitive functioning.
A slow progress made by dynamic assessment techniques in content areas, such as reading and writing may be related to the fact that relevant cognitive functions are usually described as "crystallized" (Carroll, 1993) and resistant to short-term changes. Standard reading tests contain a large amount of material (e.g. vocabulary) comprehension of which depends on students’ previous knowledge rather than their cognitive functioning. That is why unlike dynamic assessment of general cognition that could use the material of standard psychometric tests, dynamic assessment in content areas requires the construction of special materials sensitive to cognitive strategy use.

Dynamic Assessment of Reading
Interest in dynamic assessment of reading coincided with important changes that took place in the reading theory. Without denying the role of more crystallized reading skills contemporary authors pay greater attention to the cognitive aspects of reading. It was established that successful readers monitor their reading, plan strategies, adjust effort appropriately, and evaluate the success of their on-going efforts to understand. The process is essentially inferential, in other words, r eaders must be able to ‘reason’ about text material during reading. Research indicates that direct instruction in techniques that involve students in actively reasoning about texts improves comprehension ( Brown, Campione and Day, 1981). The need for adding metacognitive elements to reading curricula became apparent, since researchers consistently posit that metacognition plays an important - indeed vital - role in reading ( Brown et al, 1983).
In a landmark study, Palinscar & Brown, (1984) suggest that strategy instruction has the potential of being an effective approach to improving comprehension in L1 readers. Garner (1987) indicates that self-awareness and control of learning to read for comprehension can be taught through the acquisition of cognitive strategies, and suggests certain guidelines for those attempting classroom implementation of the strategy instruction.

1. Teachers must devote time to the processes involved in reading and learning. Brown (1981) noted that product rather than process is stressed in most traditional classrooms. In order to stress processes, the covert cognitive and metacognitive processes must first be rendered into overt form, i.e., suitable materials must be devised.
2. Teachers must do task analyses of strategies to be taught. Strategic problem-solving activities must be examined and strategies broken down into global steps.
3. Teachers must demonstrate a variety of situations in which learners might profitably use the strategies taught, and transfer to these situations must be explicitly taught.

One piece of research which highlights the importance of strategy training is that of Dole, Brown & Trathen (1996). The group which received strategy training outperformed other groups when asked to read selections on their own, without the teachers’ support, pointing to the transfer value of teaching students to become independent learners. This study, like earlier ones, shows that lower achievers benefit particularly from learning specific strategies. In addition, the research ind icated that strategies could compensate for lack of background knowledge. Although the experimental group was not given advance background knowledge provided to other groups, this did not place them at a serious disadvantage.
Concomitantly with this shift of emphasis from rote learning to strategy instruction a number of authors attempted to adapt the dynamic assessment procedure for the needs of reading assessment. Cioffi and Carney (1983) argued that standard assessment procedures are best at evaluating the students’ skills knowledge, but insufficient for estimating the students’ learning potential and provide little help for identifying the conditions under which the progress can be made. The authors illustrated their claim by a case study of a third grade student who was diagnosed as reading 6 to 9 months below his grade level according to standard tests. The teaching phase in the dynamic assessment included preteaching difficult vocabulary, activating prior knowledge, providing directions for reading, revealing system and structure in text and requiring articulation of what is learned. Under these conditions the child demonstrated grade appropriate average speed of silent reading a nd answered 7 out of 8 questions correctly. While reading orally the child made only 7 miscues, all of them semantically and syntactically appropriate. The dynamic asthus confirmed that the child’s learning potential is consistent with his grade placement and provided the teachers with specific information necessary for creating conditions conducive of his progress in reading.
Kletzien and Bednar (1990) demonstrated how activation of specific strategy may help older children to overcome their text comprehension problems. The authors reported a case study of a 10th grade student whose reading ability increasingly lagged behind her grade level. The girl admitted that she usually did not understand the social studies texts when she had to read them. The strategy analysis of the girl’s performance indicated that though she was able to use the decoding strat egies appropriately, her text comprehension was based almost exclusively on background experience. When such an experience was insufficient or irrelevant the level of comprehension declined significantly. Dynamic assessment allowed the authors to identify one strategy that was present in the girl’s cognitive repertoire but has never been used by her for scholarly text comprehension purposes. That was a strategy of visualization. The girl related that she always vividly imagines the heroine s of the romance novels she reads during the summer. It was the activation of this strategy that allowed the girl to anticipate what was going to happen in the next paragraph. The dynamic assessment revealed the girl’s reading potential and helped to plot her ZPD that stretched from the 5th to the 10th grade level.

Download the complete paper