Dynamic assessment of diverse children: A tutorial

Dynamic assessment (DA) has been advocated as an alternative and/or supplem ental approach to traditional standardized testing with children who are cu lturally and linguistically diverse (CLD). However, there is great variabil ity across DA methods and applications, limited information concerning whic h methods and procedures may be best suited to differentiate language disor der from difference. In this tutorial, DA methods are compared with respect to their assessment applications. Next, an assessment protocol recommended for the identification of language disorder versus difference is described . Finally, examples of two Spanish-English bilingual children are used to s how how the protocol may be useful to assess children's language-learning p otential and to minimize misdiagnosis.