Research with the Lectical Assessment System (LAS)

We employ the Lectical Assessment System (LAS)—and a set of research methods—developmental maieutics—to study, describe, and assess the development of reasoning in many areas of knowledge.

On this page, we provide brief descriptions of our methods and research. If you want more in-depth information, see our articles and reports and the projects page. You can also visit DiscoTest to see how we are using our methods to change classroom testing.

Historically, if you wanted to describe how a skill or concept developed, you would have tested a group of volunteers several times over many years. That way, you'd gradually build up an understanding of how their knowledge changed over time. This process was effective and accurate, but costly—in both time and money. Consequently, only a few learning sequences have been described in this way.

That's where Theo Dawson came in. She wanted to make developmental assessment practical and affordable. Fortunately, Piaget, Fischer, Commons and a few other developmental researchers had already provided general descriptions of the developmental spiral. Dawson took this existing knowledge and built upon it to devise the Lectical™ Assessment System (LAS). The levels and tiers that comprise the lectical scale were first described by Fischer.

She then designed an effective new methodology for describing learning pathways. Once pathways have been described, it becomes possible to create (1) high quality developmental assessments, (2) scoring rubrics, and (3) developmentally informed curricula.

This table provides brief descriptions of four lectical levels. To learn more, visit lectica.info.

The LAS makes it possible to describe learning sequences without conducting long-term studies of learning. This is because, unlike other developmental assessment systems, it functions as a developmental ruler. With it, we can score any performance in any area of knowledge. No matter what the subject matter is, we can use the ruler to study it. Although the lectical scale has 13 levels, our assessments only target the top 5—the levels most commonly observed in adolescence and adulthood.

We can do many things with the LAS that can’t be done with other measures. We have used the LAS to:

• describe how adults learn essential skills;
  
• assess the thinking skills of employees;
  
• analyze the task demands of jobs;
  
• describe knowledge and skill standards for management positions;
  
• determine appropriate learning objectives for individuals;
  
• evaluate curricula designed to improve thinking skills; and
  
• design customized learning recommendations.

To explain how we use the LAS to describe learning sequences, we'll use an example from our leadership work. First, we interviewed about 300 people between the ages of 5 and 65 about their conceptions of good leadership. Then, our lectical analysts scored the interviews for their lectical level. At the same time, another group of researchers coded the conceptual content of the interviews. Once the scoring and coding were finished, we were able to examine the relation between what people said and the lectical level of their performances. This made it possible to describe what leadership reasoning looked like at each level represented in our data.

We then went on to analyze the task demands of different management levels, assigning them to phases of development. As part of this process, we described a variety of leadership competency requirements for 5 management levels. These competency sequences parallel the developmental sequences for acquiring these skills. Within the next few years, we expect to complete the first exhaustive account of the development of central leadership skills. We invite you to view a summary of the sequence for a competency one of our customers calls integrated action.

The LAS has been employed to trace developmental trajectories in numerous skill domains, including morality, evaluative reasoning, leadership, reflective judgment, problem-solving, math, and physical science. The LAS is also a central component of our work linking research, assessment, curricula, and evaluation.

For more information about the LAS and how we use it to describe developmental pathways, click here. To read articles about some of our research, use the links below:

• evaluative reasoning,
• moral judgment,
• critical thinking,
• leadership,
• decision making,
• reflective judgment, and
• physics reasoning.

We use what we discover about learning pathways to devise and test curricula. In conventional approaches to curriculum development, content experts work together to determine the sequence in which material should be learned. At DTS, we not only rely on the knowledge of content experts, we study learning to determine how concepts are actually acquired. The approach is called developmental maieutics. By combining the knowledge of content experts with knowledge gleaned from research on conceptual development, we can identify the learning tasks and the optimal order of instruction for any knowledge domain.

Our approach to curriculum development involves several steps:

1. Working with clients to identify an appropriate base of expert knowledge in a given domain. For example, the Decision Making Database, a database designed to inform a three-level decision making curriculum for government managers, is based on a developmental analysis of a set of decision making texts selected by our client with the assistance of several decision making experts.
2. Employing the expert knowledge base identified in step one to identify the skills that make up a given domain. These skills are presented as a hierarchically organized skill map.
3. Defining the developmental sequence for building each of the skills identified in step 2.
4. Identifying the “teaching points” addressed in the base of expert knowledge identified in step 1, and assessing the developmental level of the knowledge presented in each of these teaching points.
5. Identifying the skills (from step 2) represented in each of the teaching points identified in step 4.

During the last few years, we've evaluated a number of curricula, including curricula focused on critical thinking, decision making, physical science, and educational psychology. To do so, we embed developmental assessments at strategic time-points during and after the delivery of a given curriculum. These assessments are designed to be useful both to instructors and researchers. They can also be employed to provide students with high quality feedback on their learning.

We score and analyze the content of assessment results using the same methodology we employ to describe learning sequences. Reports include information about changes in what and how students think at different time points. These accounts are detailed enough to inform curricular improvement.

As far as we know, we are the only providers of program evaluations who include detailed accounts of student learning with our evaluations. You can download some of our evaluation reports on the articles page.