Welcome to DTS: Where assessment and learning go hand-in-hand

Ten years ago, as part of her dissertation research, Theo Dawson asked the question, "What is a good education?" In people's responses, one idea stood out. This was the idea of "education as play". In some cases, the education as play theme dominated interviews, leading one respondent to claim that, "testing should be part of a playful, ongoing conversation between a student and a teacher that tells the teacher what the student is most likely to benefit from learning next."

Disco, our radical alternative to conventional assessment, fosters this kind of dialogue, nurturing children's inborn love of learning, improving teachers' domain and developmental knowledge, increasing time for teacher-student interactions, and providing researchers with the data we need to understand how students learn subject matter and reasoning skills. To learn more about Disco™, click here.

Our developmental assessments are a major advance over other forms of assessment, because they fulfill three important objectives. Most tests only tell what a test-taker knows. Our tests tell us:

1. what the test-taker knows;
2. how the test-taker thinks about what s/he knows; and
3. what the test-taker needs to learn next to advance to the next level.

Traditional forms of assessment achieve only the first objective. The second objective can be met with lectical™ assessment. Achieving the third objective requires research into the pathways through which skills develop. To this end, we have collected and analyzed literally thousands of clinical interviews and essays, gradually building the knowledge base required to understand how skills develop over time. This research is widely published in peer reviewed journals, books, and on the web. To learn more about it, go to articles and reports.

In addition to assessments, we provide consulting and research services. Check out the tabs below to find out if we offer these services in your area of interest.

Successfully navigating our complex and changing world requires complex and flexible reasoning skills. At DTS, we use a set of revolutionary cognitive assessment tools to find out how well people think and help them learn to think better. We serve a wide range of clients, from individuals to governments & corporations.

Successfully navigating this site requires only that you click on one of the tabs below to see how we might be able to help you in your area of interest.

If you would like to take control of your own development, you've come to the right place. We make all of our assessments available to the general public. Whatever your reason for wanting to develop your thinking, it is likely that you will find at least one helpful assessment here. Here are just a few reasons customers give for using our assessments:

1. improving job skills;
2. improving leadership skills,
3. preparing for a promotion;
4. learning to think better about complex issues;
5. preparing for college; and
6. expanding awareness.

To learn more, click here.

We believe that each student is unique, and we know that your primary goal as a consultant is to identify the qualities of each student and match those with the right learning environment. This involves communicating directly with the individual student (and his or her family) as well as gathering a portfolio of information about his or her skills and knowledge, including test scores, grades, and coursework. One ingredient is missing from this mix—an assessment of thinking and learning skills. Our on-line assessment of reflective judgment fills this gap. This is important, because the quality of students' reflective judgment skills is one of the best predictors of what they are ready to learn. To learn more, click here.

As every leadership coach knows, leadership is a multifaceted skill. When it comes to leadership skills, there is no single solution. However, with our revolutionary assessment tools, we can measure some of the essential skills that reliably predict leadership success. The first is the ability to make high quality decisions, even in the most complex and challenging situations. The second is the ability build a strong and healthy organization by reconciling the interests of individuals with the organizations' central objectives. And the third is the ability to envision possible futures, even in an environment of ambiguity and change. All these skills require a broad knowledge base, excellent communication skills, and the ability to handle complexity. We assess these skills with accuracy and reliability. Click here to learn more.

As an integral psychotherapist, one of your goals is to help clients move toward an integral conception of the self. To meet your needs, we have designed an assessment of self understanding as it manifests in important life contexts. Our report includes a developmental score, an account of the way in which the test-taker articulates and integrates a range of perspectives, and a guide to interpretation. We also offer assessments of evaluative reasoning about the good, reflective judgment, and a multidimensional assessment that examines development along three lines: self understanding, evaluative reasoning about the good, and reflective judgment. Click here to learn more.

Assessments of content knowledge like the SAT and GRE have guided college admissions for decades. Although it is important to understand what students know, it is equally important to know how they think about what they know. Decades of research demonstrates that one of the best predictors of student success is the quality of their reflective judgment skills. Unfortunately, there have been no affordable and accurate assessments of these skills—until now. Click here to learn more.

In a perfect world you'd have access to a comprehensive set of objective tools that provide you with the knowledge you need to make excellent hiring and promotion decisions at every level of management. Ideally, you'd be able to use the same tools to find out if your leadership training dollar is making a real difference in management performance. We can take you closer to this perfect world, because we've pioneered these assessment tools. Our assessments are unique. They don't just assess what people know; they measure how well people think about what they know. This is the single most important thing you need to understand about your managers, because, aside from workplace environment, it's the best overall predictor of performance that you can readily influence. Click here to learn more.

Virtually all organizations are hierarchically organized, with different sets of accountabilities and authorities associated with each level. As individuals move up the management ladder, the demands of their jobs become increasingly complex.

Organizations run more efficiency when managers have the right skills for their jobs. Our revolutionary assessment tools can help you make sure the right people are in the right jobs. How do we do this? We (1) evaluate the complexity of the tasks associated with each position in an organization's management structure, then (2) assess the level of complexity at which current employees approach these tasks. To learn more, click here.

Too often, organizations judge the effectiveness of in-house (or external) educational programs by asking participants how they feel about a course or seminar. At DTS we know that satisfaction surveys don’t begin to appraise the effectiveness of a learning intervention. Without accurate information about the learning a program delivers, employers often end up investing thousands—even millions—of dollars on courses that deliver little or no learning.

We provide accurate and reliable assessments that tell you what students learned and how well they think about what they learned. Click here to learn more.

DTS has participated in a number of research projects with other academics, including studies of learning, parenting, and leadership. We are particularly interested in research that examines:

• k-20 science learning;
• effects of different learning interventions on cognitive development;
• developmental pathways;
• differential developmental progress across knowledge domains;
• leadership development;
• social development;
• ethical/moral development;
• the development of decision making;
• the relation between cognitive development and other pschological dimensions;
• the relation between cognitive development and cognitive bias; and
• the relation between cognitive development and changes in the brain;

To learn more, click here.

Note: Whenever possible, the tests we design for research purposes will be made available online as DiscoTests, for the FREE use of public school teachers and their students. DTS will also host a range of FREE "tests in the making" that are designed primarily for adults. For an example, see the SMS.