The Impact of Dynamic Assessment on Achievement of Students in Physics

Abstract

Dynamic assessment (DA) originated from Vygotsky’s ZPD theory has been widely accepted and employed as an effective tool to improve students’ learning in recent years. This study investigates the impact of DA on the development of students in physics taught in higher education, that is, at the university level. For the purpose of the present study, sixty undergraduate students in the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment at Ulster University were randomly divided into two groups as experimental group and control group. Over an 8-week period, the students in the experimental group were asked to perform 16 physics tasks through DA procedure, whereas the students in the control group received traditional teaching instruction. Results indicated that the students in experimental group improved their physics knowledge significantly compared to their peers in the control group. The findings of this study suggest that DA is an effective method to improve students' physics knowledge.

Keywords: assessment, dynamic assessment, physics education