Chapter 3: 21st Century Dynamic Assessment

How can we assess the core knowledge and skills that students need to succeed in the 21st century? Researchers and practitioners have identified a variety of competencies, referred to as 21st century skills, information communication technology (ICT) skills, media literacy, cyberlearning, and new literacies. With the explosion of information in all fields comes the need for students to become adept at using knowledge, not just memorizing it. Students must be able to apply complex skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration across a range of problems in academic and practical contexts. Thus, assessments of 21st century skills must provide students opportunities to demonstrate competencies for acquiring, applying, and transferring knowledge. We can tap into these skills through dynamic assessments that expand how phenomena, information, and data can be represented and increase the number of ways learners can demonstrate their knowledge and skills. In addition, technology can support use of scaffolding during assessment tasks to monitor and promote learning progress. The challenges for K–12 educators and assessment developers are to create assessment tasks that allow students to demonstrate 21st century skills and to create evidence models for making inferences about student progress and proficiency.