Dynamic assessment as an early screening tool for identifying New Zealand children at risk of reading difficulty upon school entry : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

Listed in 2019 Dean's List of Exceptional ThesesThe purpose of this study was to investigate the use of a dynamic assessment as a screening tool for identifying children at risk of reading difficulty. Unlike traditional static assessment, dynamic assessment includes a teaching stage within the assessment and aims to determine what the child can do independently as well as what they have the potential to do when given quality input. At the start of their formal schooling, 165 New Zealand children were administered a dynamic assessment of phonological decoding, along with several static measures of emergent literacy skills. At the end of their first year at school, these same children’s reading abilities were assessed using multiple early reading measures. The results were analysed to determine whether measures administered at the beginning of formal schooling significantly predict future reading ability, and whether there is a significant difference in the ability of the static and dynamic measures to predict future reading difficulty and in their respective predictive classification accuracy. Results indicated that the dynamic assessment of decoding was able to predict future reading difficulty with a high level of accuracy and that it provided superior predictive ability and classification accuracy to that of the static measures of emergent literacy. Furthermore, combining the dynamic and static measures did not improve the overall ability of the dynamic measure alone to predict future reading difficulty. The ease and efficiency of administration of the dynamic assessment, as well as its ability to provide information pertinent to supporting remedial intervention, provided evidence of this measure’s acceptability as an effective universal screening tool. Taken together, the findings indicate that a dynamic assessment of decoding can accurately predict future reading difficulty and that it has the potential to meet the other important characteristics of an effective universal screening tool. This provides support for the use of a dynamic assessment of phonological coding as a universal screening tool for the prediction of reading difficulty at the start of children’s formal schooling