TRANSYLVANIAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY | Special Issue | 1

BO O K R E V I E W

THE DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT OF

COGNITIVE MODIFIABILITY: THE

LEARNING PROPENSITY

ASSESSMENT DEVICE: THEORY,

INSTRUMENTS AND TECHNIQUE

FEUERSTEIN, R.

FEUERSTEIN, R.S.

FALIK, L.H. & RAND, Y. (2003)

Jerusalem : The IELP Press. ISBN 965 – 90490-0-5

When I was a young educational psychologist in the late 1960s, I

found myself becoming increasingly disenchanted with the fact that I

had been trained to function merely as a super-efficient psychometri-

cian. It seemed to me at the time (and, it still does to a certain extent)

that my chosen profession was built upon an untenable set of assump-

tions about the nature of intelligence, its measurement and its value in

predicting academic success and failure. I subsequently published

several articles in professional journals which were highly critical of in-

telligence tests and testing, one of which was entitled, ‘If we throw the

tests out of the window, what is there left to do?’ Needless to say, few

coherent answers were forthcoming at that time.

When I founded the Master’s degree training course in Educational

Psychology at Exeter in 1971, I was determined to take a totally fresh

approach to the preparation of professional educational psychologists,

and for a time we refused to teach the administration of IQ tests at all.

Whilst helpful in stimulating the creative instincts of me and my col-

leagues, this approach tended to create as many problems as it an-

swered.

Then in the early 1980s a colleague presented me with two books

which changed my professional life. These were ‘The dynamic assess-

ment of retarded performers’ and its comparison volume ‘Instrumen-

tal Enrichment’, both of which were written by Reuven Feuerstein and

his brilliant team of co-workers. The first of these books, published in

1979, can truly be considered to be the first book to introduce the no-

170 | FEUERSTEIN, R.; FEUERSTEIN, R. S.; FALIK, L. H. & RAND, Y.

tion of dynamic assessment to the world. In doing so it introduced us

also to the Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD) which en-

abled us at a stroke to throw off the shackles of IQ testing.

There have been many books and articles written about dynamic

assessment since that time, some good and some downright awful, but

none have had anything like the same impact as that first, seminal vol-

ume. It heralded a revolutionary paradigm shift in our thinking about

cognitive assessment.

It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I approached what I

thought would be merely an updated version of that groundbreaking

tome. There can be no doubt that an updating was needed, particu-

larly in view of the weaknesses that had become apparent in the ad-

ministration and scoring of the LPAD and in funding scientifically ac-

ceptable ways of reporting findings. But could this be done without

losing the fundamental essence of dynamic assessment?

I need not have worried. Whilst this is in many respects an updat-

ing, in other respects it is a completely new book. Note first the word-

ing of the title with its change of emphasis from ‘retarded performers’

to ‘cognitive modifiability’, thereby announcing that dynamic assess-

ment is applicable to anyone, not just retarded performers, and is con-

cerned with assessing cognitive change. Note also the change of word-

ing from learning potential to learning propensity, which takes us fur-

ther into the realm of likelihood or capacity.

The book is in four parts, the first of which (three chapters) pro-

vides a helpful review of the theoretical and conceptual foundations of

dynamic assessment.

This first section serves as a really helpful introduction to the fun-

damental differences between static and dynamic assessment as well

as providing the clearest summary that I have read of the ways in

which the various forms of dynamic assessment are similar and differ-

ent. In particular, it highlights the unique aspects of LPAD assessment

and its theoretical foundations. Here and elsewhere in the book there

is an impressive coverage of the fundamental research literature, but I

must admit to a slight sense of disappointment that few of the refer-

ences cited are post 1994.

The book’s second section describes the various sections of the

LPAD and the established procedures for individual and group ad-

BOOK REVIEW - THE DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT OF COGNITIVE MODIFIABILITY… | 171

ministration. There is little that is new here, but interesting comple-

mentary chapters describe the development of LPAD extensions to

young children and special populations, all of which is ‘fleshed out’ by

a number of descriptive case studies.

The third section, devoted to research applications, begins with a

previously published chapter on how the LPAD was originally devel-

oped, which is followed by an exploratory section on devising an ap-

propriate research methodology for testing the LPAD model. I found

this chapter one of the least convincing, but it is followed by informa-

tive descriptions of using the LPAD with Ethiopian and with Down

Syndrome populations.

I found the final section, which is mainly devoted to producing pro-

files, reports and recommendations following LPAD assessment, to be

the most novel and, for the experienced practitioner, possibly the most

useful aspect of the book. LPAD profiling has been one of the most

contentious and most nebulous aspects of the dynamic approach to

assessment. For the first time in my experience the key issues relating

to this area are tackled in depth in a manner that is both intellectually

challenging and practically useful. This chapter alone should be essen-

tial reading for any professional seeking to move beyond the con-

straints of traditional test reporting.

This is a broad-ranging book which goes far beyond a description of

the LPAD and its applications. Like its predecessor, it deserves to be-

come a seminal text for anyone wishing to gain a deep understanding

of what dynamic assessment can and should involve.

BOB BURDEN

University of Exeter1

1 R.L.Burden@exeter.ac.uk