BPS Approved Certification Programme
We offer a two-year Certification Programme approved through the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) CPD Quality Mark Scheme programme for the purposes of continuing professional development. The programme is designed to develop your skills in dynamic assessment under expert supervision. Our programme consists of two levels. See below for further details.
Advanced Level Dynamic Assessment Practitioner
This certification programme is typically attended by Educational Psychologists who currently use Dynamic Assessment (DA) in their practice or aim to integrate it more fully.
Over the 2-year programme, practitioners participate in regular group supervision “drop-in” sessions (six times per year), designed to build skills and confidence in applying DA across diverse contexts.
Coursework includes:
- Maintaining a reflective diary of DA practice
- Writing three brief (500-word) case studies
- Completing a 500-word reflection on how your DA skills have developed throughout the programme
Expert Level Dynamic Assessment Practitioner
This Certification Programme is designed for those looking to advance their Dynamic Assessment (DA) skills. The programme focuses on developing expertise in digital feedback—or “digital feedforward”—by using video recordings of DA sessions as a basis for planning intervention programmes. Participants also attend regular “drop-in” supervision sessions, held six times a year.
Course requirements include:
- Maintaining a reflective diary
- Providing video evidence demonstrating the integration of DA with digital feedback across three different assessment or intervention cases
- Submitting a brief report (approximately 500 words) on how your DA skills have progressed since the start of the programme
- Participants have two years to complete the certification.
Feedback from those educational psychologists (EPs) who have completed the Advanced Level certification programme
“At times my journey has been challenging, and I have felt isolated and sometimes ostracised for using DA, however, the dynamic assessment supervisions provided a supportive community of like-minded psychologists and became increasingly important to me. I feel that my practice is now more ethical and one of the consequences of developing my DA skills has meant that I am engaging in more dialogue about the positive outcomes of my work for the child. I am also more mindful of the child’s experience of the assessment and am not apologetic for children having fun too in the process"
“Completing the certification programme has been helpful in providing me with much-needed space and support for reflecting on my DA practice. I now feel more confident in my ability to use mediated learning principles and strategies in my assessments with children and young people as well as in my work with staff and parents. As an EP, this is what I strive for, to be able to effectively share my professional knowledge and expertise with the people who can make a real difference in a learner’s life”
“Doing the Dynamic Assessment accreditation has helped me to use the approach more frequently, and highlighted to me how much more flexible and wide-reaching dynamic assessment can be compared to other assessments”
“My skills have developed in so many areas of DA during the past 2 years and will continue to do so as I practice DA more. I have grown in confidence and now use this as my main form of assessment whether it be through consultation, observation or direct work with a child or young person. The certification process provides a welcome focus and formal structure to developing your DA skills”
“Throughout the two years that I have been completing the DA certification programme, I have noted several areas in which I have seen improvements but particularly in how I provide mediation (e.g., at which point during the task, in what way, what to do if the mediation doesn’t work) and in capturing helpful insights based on DA (e.g., what I noticed that the child had struggled with, what helped them, and how to capture as much as possible about the multiple cognitive and affective elements)”
“Completing the certification programme has helped me to progress both my skills and confidence in using Dynamic Assessment. I can recognise the change from my early anxieties focused on what resource to use, how to record the strengths and needs I observed, how to mediate and how to report my findings, to now using DA more flexibly and allowing myself to be guided by the pupil and the circumstances in which I meet with them. This has enabled me to feel confident in selecting appropriate tools to explore children and young people’s learning strengths and needs"
“At times my journey has been challenging, and I have felt isolated and sometimes ostracised for using DA, however, the dynamic assessment supervisions provided a supportive community of like-minded psychologists and became increasingly important to me. I feel that my practice is now more ethical and one of the consequences of developing my DA skills has meant that I am engaging in more dialogue about the positive outcomes of my work for the child. I am also more mindful of the child’s experience of the assessment and am not apologetic for children having fun too in the process"
“At times my journey has been challenging, and I have felt isolated and sometimes ostracised for using DA, however, the dynamic assessment supervisions provided a supportive community of like-minded psychologists and became increasingly important to me. I feel that my practice is now more ethical and one of the consequences of developing my DA skills has meant that I am engaging in more dialogue about the positive outcomes of my work for the child. I am also more mindful of the child’s experience of the assessment and am not apologetic for children having fun too in the process"