Evaluation of and in educational institutions: histories, problems and perspectives

Abstract

The contribution considers the role that education is called to play in the construction and modernisation of a culture of good evaluation understood in a formative, regulatory and democratic sense. It will analyse the main perspectives and paradigms of assessment that have emerged in recent decades. To this end, it will highlight some highly topical issues in the scenario of the pervasiveness of assessment, understood in a linear sense, rather than in its complexity, showing its limits and risks. It will hypothesise the need for reflexive elaboration processes both in the contexts of use, by the subjects directly involved, and in the broader framework of the educational, political, cultural and social institutions involved, as well as within the pedagogical scientific community, articulated in its various competences and specificities. In relation to this, the contribution will address the issue of the essentiality of the link between evaluation criteria/instruments and ethical, theoretical and political choices