Dynamic testing: Assessing cognitive potential of children with culturally diverse backgrounds

• Ethnic minority and majority children were administered a dynamic test of figural matrices.
• Ethnic minority children received lower scores on static reasoning measures.
• Teacher's ratings of learning ability were higher for ethnic majority (Dutch) children.
• Dynamic measures showed similar cognitive potential for both ethnic groups.
• Dynamic administration of cognitive tests may aid assessment in culturally diverse schools.

Dynamic testing may be useful in assessing cognitive potential in disadvantaged populations such as ethnic minorities. Majority and minority culture children's performance on a dynamic test of figural matrices was examined using a pretest–training–posttest design. Dynamically tested children were compared to practice- and attention-control groups at three inner-city schools (N = 111). School performance and teacher ratings of learning-ability were lower for ethnic minority children. Ethnicity was related to pretest performance, but not change from pretest to posttest for the dynamic testing condition. Instructional-needs were similar for both culture groups, and related to pretest performance, performance change and teacher ratings. AnimaLogica appears to provide similar indices of cognitive potential for both indigenous and ethnic minority children and these indices do not appear attributable to individual differences in working memory. Generally the focus in multicultural assessment lies in limiting cultural bias within the test and norms; however, dynamic administration of cognitive assessments may be an additional, practical method to help educators ascertain children's cognitive potential in culturally diverse schools.