Psychometric versus Dynamic Assessment for Mathematically Gifted Children with Learning Difficulties

The purpose of this research is to investigate the efficacy of psychometric and dynamic assessment to identifying 'mathematically gifted students with learning difficulties' (MG/LD) in Jordan. An extensive process of quantitative methods was conducted by a multi-disciplinary team to identify a sample of 30 students (16 girls and 14 boys) in the fifth and sixth grades, ages 10 years to 11 years and 11 months, at three public primary schools in Amman, Jordan. A multi-dimensional evaluation involving a combination of psychometric (i.e. WISC-III-Jordan, Perceptual Skills Tests, and a diagnostic Arabic Literacy Language Skills) and dynamic mathematics assessment was used. The findings of the WISC-III-Jordan test revealed a significant verbal-performance discrepancy, in addition to the characteristic patterns of strengths and weaknesses in the subtests profile and factors of five cognitive classification systems and models. The findings of the dynamic mathematics assessment showed that 90.4% of the students who scored 120 or above on the WISC-III-Jordan (30 out of 32) showed a high variance of performance (35.4%) between the preand posttests. Visual perceptual skills, including visual short-term memory, were found to be significantly stronger than auditory perceptual skills in the MG/LD sample. Psychometric Assessment versus Dynamic Assessment There is an important relationship between psychological assessment and what happens subsequently regarding the child’s learning. The individual educational plan is attempting to discover the ways in which the assessment can inform the next steps of the child’s learning. Conventionally, researches have been concerned with psychometric tests such as the WISC-III, dyslexia tests, and achievement tests. Such tests have been used in the researches as bases for assessing intellectual giftedness and learning difficulties, but have focused primarily on technical issues, for example, standardisation and reliability and, therefore, a lot of other important issues have been neglected; for example how can the student’s learning be improved? Are timed tests suitable to be used with students with learning difficulties who need extra time to read and comprehend the questions? Also, when using psychometric tests, certain procedures are followed, and specific tasks are given. The students must remain passive, and are not able to make their own contribution to the assessment process. Accordingly, the empowering function of this assessment may not be considered sufficient by educational psychologists. Psychometric tests have received further criticism for being unfair to ethnic minorities and children from disadvantaged backgrounds (Kaufman, 1990; Satler, 1992). Further criticism could be made of the tendency of psychometric test performance to be used as representative of overall ability when only a fraction of the child’s intelligence has been tested. This can have serious consequences for a student and lead to negative labels being attached to students in the basis of their performance on psychometric tests (Lauchlan & Elliott, 2001).