Dynamic assessment (DA), an interactive, test–intervene–retest model of psychological and psychoeducational assessment, is a rapidly developing approach of increasing interest to practicing psychologists. In one form or another, DA has been applied in psychological, neuropsychological, speech/language, and educational contexts. Several major texts now describe the various theories, models, and procedures of DA. These texts provide information primarily concerning the background, research, and descriptions of DA procedures; however, none of the texts puts these procedures into the hands of practitioners in a way that equips them to implement the approach. Furthermore, although trainers are often well informed about theoretical models and, in many cases introduce their students to the ideas and principles of DA, few trainers actually work with their students to develop and refine their professional application of these skills.

Seeking to fill this void, we describe in this book basic DA approaches and procedures and elaborate the full instructions, scoring approaches, and interpretation possibilities of DA procedures that we and others have developed and that we actually incorporate into our own practices. We use these procedures to extend, supplement, and enrich our assessments to bridge the gap between assessment and intervention and to deepen insight into the functioning of our clients. We present DA not as a substitute or replacement for existing approaches to assessment but as an extension of and addition to these more traditional procedures; DA provides important information that is simply not available from other sources.