Dynamic Assessment: Evaluations are a process, not a test (with Destiny Johnson)

De Facto Leaders

I regularly hear from therapists who ask me questions about how to evaluate language in a way that gives detailed, meaningful, and accurate information.

Most people know standardized tests only show a small fraction of what we need to know when it comes to language and cognition, yet many clinicians still don’t consistently utilize a complete portfolio evaluation.

A lot barriers get in the way, including:

👉Lack of clarity on what “dynamic assessment” means.

👉Misconceptions about how a robust protocol looks (hint: “robust” doesn’t always mean “standardized”).

👉Pressure from leadership who want to see standard scores.

👉Confusing or outdated guidelines that don’t enable clinicians to effectively evaluate diverse populations.

That’s why I invited Destiny Johnson to episode 187 of De Facto Leaders to talk about dynamic assessment for monolingual and multilingual learners.

Destiny Johnson, M.S., CCC-SLP, is a bilingual speech-language pathologist (English/Spanish) with a deep passion for culturally responsive assessment and treatment practices, as well as advocating for policy change. She has presented on dynamic assessment at the CSHA Convergence 2024, focusing on the importance of dynamic assessment in bilingual children. Destiny has experience working as a school-based SLP, in private practice, and in early intervention. She is also the founder and CEO of Multimodal Communication Speech Clinic P.C.

In this conversation, Destiny shares key concepts relating to dynamic assessments, including:

✅Modifiability and assessing learner potential.

✅Using graduated prompting and test/retest to make treatment recommendations.

✅The Mediated Learning Observation Sheet and other tools that make dynamic assessment robust, without relying solely on standard scores.

✅What is examiner effort, and how do we use this concept to put explicit supports in place?

✅Do school leaders really want standard scores, or is it something else they need?

You can connect with Destiny on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destinybrookjohnson/
On Instagram @destinyjohnsonslp
On her private practice website here: https://www.multimodalcommunication.org/

The following resources were mentioned in this episode:

Dr. Elizabeth Pena’s resources and research on Dynamic Assessment:
https://learningcenter.asha.org/diweb/catalog/item/eid/PD102345
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saHMtIz7IgA
https://products.brookespublishing.com/cw_contributorinfo.aspx?ContribID=1557&Name=Elizabeth+D.+Pe%C3%B1a%2C+Ph.D.%2C+CCC-SLP

Dr. Janet Patterson’s research:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32750281/

Information on the Mediated Learning Observation Scale;
https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/0161-1461(2001/019)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38758673/

This previous episode on De Facto Leaders: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/ep-108-how-to-do-multilingual-evaluations-as-a-monolingual-therapist-with-meg-morgan/

In this episode, I mention the School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers develop a strategic plan for putting executive functioning support in place in collaboration with their school teams. You can learn more about that program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership

In this episode, I mention Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that helps SLPs create a system for language therapy. You can learn more about Language Therapy Advance Foundations here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy/

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