Dynamic Assessment of the narrative ability in a group of South African preschool children

Sammanfattning: Standardized tests are generally based on the norms of the majority population who share the same culture, language and above all, similar prior learning experiences. Because of this, it is problematic for clinicians to use standardized tests when assessing children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. Dynamic assessment (DA) is an alternative assessment method that can circumvent the dilemma of biased testing of children from CLD populations. By looking at the child‟s modifiability instead of static performance DA aims to target the child‟s true language ability. In this study the researchers investigated the difference between narratives produced before and after a dynamic assessment procedure called a test-teach-retest method. 16 South African preschool children were assessed in one session with a wordless picture sequence and then the test-teach-retest format was implemented. Each child was asked to tell the story in the pictures, followed by a dynamic assessment phase (focused questions), and finally a second elicitation of the narrative. No time elapsed between the tests and the teaching phase. Significant differences were found between the narratives elicited before and after the focused questions, but not for all measures. The use of mental state terms (what characters feel and think) increased from the first to the second narrative as well as some of the microstructural elements (linguistic structures) and macrostructural elements (global organization of the story). These results indicate that the use of narrative language in the field of DA has the potential of reducing bias when assessing children‟s narrative ability in culturally and linguistically diverse populations.