Dynamic/Interactive assessment has been a long time coming! It has been almost a century since Alfred Binet suggested that assessment of the processes of learning should constitute a priority in the mental testing movement, and over 60 years since Andre Rey made the same suggestion. An important model that supports many contemporary approaches to "flexible" or "process" assessment was offered by Vygotsky in the 1920s. The ground-breaking work by Reuven Feuerstein and his Swiss colleagues on process assessment of North African Jewish children was done in the early 1950s. In the intervening years almost every serious psychometrist has, at one time or another, called for emphasis on assessment of the processes of learning rather than an exclusive emphasis on assessment of the products of prior opportunities to learn. One has to wonder why we have had to wait so long for formalization and instrumentation of the methods for doing just that! Of course, we psychologists like to do what we do well, and we have learned to do static, normative assessment, especially of "intelligence," very well indeed. It is also unfortunately true that dynamic/interactive assessment has not attracted or fueled the volume of high-quality research that is still going to be necessary if it is to survive as a widely used supplement to static, normative testing. This volume, incorporating a strong research base, goes a long way toward remediation of that situation.

In the 20 years since publication of Feuerstein, Rand, and Hoffman's Dynamic Assessment of Learning Potential, a rich variety of specific dynamic approaches, as well as an encouraging array of assessment instruments, has appeared. Most of the work has been done with school-age children, adolescents, and adults. It is high time we had a systematic approach to dynamic assessment designed specifically for young children.

Many years ago, I asked Feuerstein why he had begun his work on dynamic assessment (and on cognitive education as well) with older children and adolescents. His quite convincing reply was essentially this: In the new state of Israel and in post-World War II Europe, there was a vast number of persons who were in great need of help with their learning abilities, because of the disruptions of war and cultural transplantation, who were about to enter adulthood and thus "disappear" from the reach of schools, guidance clinics, and child welfare agencies. Resources were very limited, so it was necessary to expend those resources first on persons with the most urgent need, and thereby to try to prevent their establishing life-long patterns of failure academically, vocationally, and socially. In other words, it was necessary to catch these young persons and give them essential help just before they vanished into an adult world where it would be much more difficult to reach them. One could have a bit longer time to reach children who were then in their early childhood. These were, of course, valid and sensible arguments for their time. Over the ensuing years it has become more and more obvious that if dynamic assessment is a good thing for older children, adolescents, and adults (and the evidence mounts that it is), then it would be an even better thing for young children. It would therefore be tempting to characterize this book as "timely." In fact, it is not. It is overdue!

As dynamic/interactive approaches to psychoeducational assessment continue to grow and to be elaborated by a diverse group of researchers and clinicians. It is important that their growth take place within a firm and clearly communicated theoretical context, that the most important questions about these approaches be examined in a thoroughly scientific manner, and that useful and "teachable" instruments be developed and made available to practitioners. Attention to those aspects is undoubtedly the most important contribution of this volume. It is also noteworthy that Tzuriel's approach has grown up, as did Binet's, in an educational context. The procedures described in this volume help us to make and to maintain the essential connections between psychoeducational assessment and the vital business of teaching and learning.

Often, new clinical instruments are constructed on the basis of testing experience, and then their submit them to some field testing--with or without having found a conceptual context within which to place them. By contrast, Tzuriel started with a theoretical orientation, both about cognitive development (what kinds of operations are important to learning and social adjustment) and about assessment (a "dynamic" approach is superior to a static, normative one). He then developed 7 novel dynamic assessment tasks while simultaneously conducting research, so the assessment instruments are both the products of his research and the instruments for doing his research--at different stages of their development, of course. All 7 tasks have been used extensively, in both clinical practice and in research, with diverse and interesting groups of children (immigrants, low-SES children, language-different children, children with learning disabilities, mental retardation, and hearing impairments, for example). Their metric characteristics have been established and reported.

Demonstrating the utility of dynamic assessment as an instrument of research, Tzuriel has used this method to investigate both educational and developmental questions that could not have been investigated so thoroughly with the use of more traditional methods. The combination of dynamic assessment with sophisticated research design and statistical analytic procedures has yielded inferences, for example, about the relation between parents' mediational behavior to their children and the children's subsequent cognitive modifiability. This same combination has made it possible to ask--and to answer--such questions as how to assess changes in children's ability to benefit from different interventions, especially from "mediated learning experiences." In that context, it is notable that the Tzuriel instruments have been used as primary criterion variables in the evaluation of the effectiveness of such cognitive education programs as Bright Start, Instrumental Enrichment, and new models of intervention by peer mediation. One happy aspect of the use of these assessment instruments with children is the observation that dynamic assessment changes the children's functioning (albeit perhaps temporarily) as well as their motivation to engage in challenging mental tasks.

The modern history of psychometrics is spotted with frequent attempt to get rid of the cultural influences on intelligence test performance. These efforts lead to one of my all-time favorite psychology stories. The "draw-a-man" test was being used widely to assess intelligence in children from different cultural settings, and was thought to be relatively "culture free" or at least "culture fair." It was then found that some subcultural groups in the United States performed quite poorly on this test, including Hopi children in the American southwest. Wayne Dennis then discovered that drawing persons was frowned upon in Hopi society, so he quite ingeniously presented Hopi children with the "draw-a-horse" test--and found that estimates of their intelligence rose substantially, to levels that often exceeded those of American dominant-culture children on the same task!

Tzuriel's reliance in this volume on Vygotsky's "social-historical" cognitive psychology goes a long way toward putting the culture back into intelligence, and intelligence back into the culture. It now seems quite possible that if we had ever been successful in stripping away the cultural components of intelligence we would have found rather little remaining!

I congratulate David Tzuriel also on his refusal to suggest that we throw out static, normative tests and replace them entirely with dynamic methods. He recognizes that assessment is a much broader enterprise than testing. It is an enterprise that demands the gathering of information from a variety of sources, including social history, static test performance, achievement in academic and other settings, and cognitive modifiability inferences derived from dynamic/interactive assessment.

One of the most persistent problems in the dissemination of dynamic/interactive assessment is the reluctance of practicing psychologists to give it a try, to step beyond the familiar and the comfortable, to take additional training, and to invest the time and effort necessary to master these exciting methods. This volume makes the whole enterprise much more accessible, much less novel or alien, and ultimately more applicable.