Advanced seminar: Developmental assessment – a cultural-historical view

Timetable

24 hrs (x 45 minutes): 12 every week group meetings on dd, hh-hh

First classes will start on October dd, 2026 (short before initial meeting a group in MSTeams will be created for better communication so be ready ;)

6 hrs: consultations to help in preparing final written work

Meetings and consultations take place at the nn AMU Building (Poznań, street, level n, room x)

 

 

Module aim (aims)

To provide knowledge concerning cultural-historical theory in psychology

To provide knowledge about rules and challenges in developmental assessment from cultural-historical psychological perspective

To develop the ability of observing and analysing child's activity from psychological perspective

To develop skills related to study-experiment design

To improve interpersonal communication skills and working in groups ability

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

It is assumed that students already know the most basic concepts of developmental psychology, have ability to read scientific papers in English and are ready to work in small teams

Syllabus

The seminar focuses on the cultural-historical approach to the assessment of development in children. Basic concepts of the approach are presented and discussed during first part of the course: nature and source of mental development, ideal, final, primary and real forms of activity, sign mediation etc. In the second part of the seminar five principles of cultural-historical developmental research methodology are learnt and applied for analysing an example of empirical experiment which test developmental changes in behaviour of children and underlying cognitive and/or emotional processes. The final part of the course is dedicated to understanding main problems in individual (or clinical) assessment in relation to higher mental functions testing and principles of normative assessment. Goals for students in this course include an in depth understanding of: 1) rules and challenges of developmental assessment from cultural-historical perspective, 2) normative versus dynamic approach to evaluation of mental development, 3) methodological problems in diagnosing childs' mental development.

Topics list:

What is mental development?

Socio-cultural source of development

Developmental research methodology

Genetic analysis: pointing gesture, speaking, reading and writing

Dynamic assessment: general principles, Cognitive Ability Profile

Presentations of final works

Final written work is expected to be prepared in small team (2-3 students) and consisting of three parts: 1) description of an original experiment presented on a movie given by the lecturer, 2) analysis of the original experiment structure in the light of the developmental research methodology, 3) suggestions for transforming the structure of original experiment following the developmental research methodology.

Reading list

1. Haywood, H. C., Lidz, C. S. (2007). Dynamic assessment in practice. Clinical and educational implications. Cambridge University Press (chapter 1: Dynamic assessment: introduction and review, pp. 1-10; chapter 3: General procedural guidelines for conducting an assessment that includes dynamic assessment, pp. 35-45).
2. Jabłoński, S. (2015). Assessment of literacy development from cultural-historical perspective. International Journal of Arts and Sciences, 8, 1, 133-146.
3. Mackenzie, N., Veresov, N. (2013). How drawing can support writing acquisition:
   Text construction in eariy writing from a Vygotskian perspective. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 38, 4, 22-29.
4. Veresov, N. (2010). Introducing cultural-historical theory: main concepts and principles of genetic research methodology. Cultural-Historical Psychology, 4, 83-90.