Group Dynamic Assessment: An Investigation into the Group ZPD of Iranian High School Students

Grounded in Vygotsky‟s sociocultural theory of mind, dynamic assessment (henceforth DA) is an alternative to more static assessment procedures or the so-called traditional approaches to assessment. In DA, assessment and instruction are integrated into one unified activity in order to reveal the underlying causes of learner‟s poor performance and remedy the identified problems through mediating his/ her performance. Following Lantolf and Poehner‟s (2004) suggestion that the use of DA procedures with groups of learners rather than individuals can be one interesting area of investigation into DA, the current study was an attempt to explore the application of Group Dynamic Assessment (henceforth GDA) to a foreign language setting and among Iranian high school students. The development of eight focal students as primary interactants was tracked during two sessions of DA program as they participated in large group interaction where the rest of the learners performed as secondary interactants and used the mediation directed at the primary interactants. The results indicated that the GDA procedure was an effective way of helping learners overcome their linguistic problems and there were signs of microgenetic development even within the same DA session. We argue that learners‟ need for assistance as provided through various types of meditational moves along with their responsiveness to these mediations provides a fine-grained diagnosis into their foreign language learning development, their ZPD and the degree of their control over the tasks at hand, and in this case the linguistic features. Implications for further research on GDA are discussed.

کلیدواژه ها:

Foreign Language Learning ، Group Dynamic assessment ، Mediation Typology ، Primary/ Secondary Interactants