ASSESSMENTS FOR EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANTS

Since 1993, our founder, Theo Dawson, has been designing, testing, and working with a developmental assessment system called the Lectical™ Assessment System. The system is based on Harvard Professor Kurt Fischer's Dynamic Skill Scale, and can be used to score the developmental level of any sample of reasoning in any area of knowledge.

The scale we use is composed of 13 levels, which cover the entire life-span. Our assessments have been designed to capture the top 5 levels of the scale, which are commonly observed from age 10 onward. Middle and high school students generally demonstrate reasoning at levels 9 and 10 (occasionally 11). Our assessment system reliably distinguishes 4 phases per level. This means we can identify 8-10 distinct phases in the middle to high school age-group, each of which has specific implications for learning.

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Decades of research have shown that students with more developed reasoning skills are more likely to succeed in challenging academic settings. This is because more challenging curricula require more complex reasoning and the complexity of students' reasoning increases with development. For example, most first year college curricula prepare students with the knowledge and skills they will need to progress to level 11. Students who reason in phases 10:4 and 11:1 are optimally prepared to learn in this kind of environment. In other words, they are likely to learn what their professors require. Students who reason in phases 10:2 and 10:3 are less likely to learn as required. Students who are already reasoning above phase 11:1 may be bored with first year courses that require a great deal of memorization, and end up performing poorly or dropping out.

Standardized assessments like the SAT are not assessments of reasoning skill. They are assessments of knowledge. Lectical assessments of reasoning skill complement assessments of content knowledge, adding another dimension to your understanding of a given student's current capabilities, and helping you to make more informed recommendations. Some students have high scores on standardized tests and low scores on lectical assessments. These are often highly intelligent students who have successfully memorized a great deal of content knowledge. Based on grades and test scores, they are frequently admitted into challenging schools, but disappoint their instructors by failing to reason well about what they have learned. Other students have low scores on standardized tests and high scores on lectical assessments. These students, who are often unusually talented, may not be admitted into the very schools in which they would excel. We hate to think how many talented students fall through this "assessment gap" each year.

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Cognitive developmental psychologists have studied how students learn in many knowledge areas, including, math, science, ethics, decision making, art, and the social domain, among others. One area that has undergone extensive study is reflective judgment (a major component of critical thinking). Researchers repeatedly have found that individuals whose reflective judgment skills are more developed can learn and use more complex and abstract information. In fact, level of reflective judgment has been shown to be positively related to learning [1-9], academic performance [5, 8, 10-16], problem-solving and decision making [17-20], tolerance [21], adaptability [22], moral development [23], and ego development [5, 23].

Building on the work of Perry and Kitchener & King, we have designed a general assessment of student's reflective judgment—the LRJA. This assessment, which requires students to reason through one of several challenging real-world dilemmas, is composed of a set of essay questions, followed by a short preference survey. Level of performance on this assessment provides a general sense of how an individual reasons and how he or she is likely to approach information and learning.

All assessments are scored by Certified Lectical Analysts, who are required to maintain a high standard of accuracy and reliability (85% agreement within 1/4 of a level with a Master Lectical Analyst).

It is important to understand that lectical scores are not like grades or percentile scores, which tell you where a student performs relative to other students. Lectical scores are more like positions on a ruler or thermometer. Each level and phase is defined in terms of the reasoning tasks someone performing at that level can accomplish. This ruler-like quality is unprecedented in academic assessment. It makes it possible for us not only to provide a score, but to tell you what that score means for a student's learning.

We can tell you what each student who takes one of our assessments needs to learn next to make optimal progress and what level they need to reason at to succeed in a given educational program.

If you are interested using our assessments in your practice, would like to follow up on a special offer, or would like more information, email us anytime.

We offer a 20% discount to all non-profit organizations that can provide documentation of their status.

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