Assessment for learning: only theory or also practice? Representations of assessment in teachers and assessment practices

Abstract

Assessment in school as a tool to promote the learning success represents one of the issues at the centre of the debate of the scientific community. One of the main issues regards the discrepancy between the abundant scientific production focusing on the importance of the formative evaluation as a fundamental element to support learning, for this reason also defined as assessment for learning, and the lack of methodological clarity regarding the use of practices of training assessment in teaching. The objective of this research is to describe the mental representations of assessment in teachers and the assessment
practices used in teaching, so as to detect a possible correspondence between the two. The research was carried out through the administration of a self-report questionnaire to a sample of 180 teachers of primary school. The results of the study, albeit with methodological limitations, highlighted a discrepancy between the mental representations of the assessment, understood in its training meaning, and a not yet consolidated use of training assessment practices which are often left to the discretion of the single teacher and, for this reason, appear to be unreliable from an informative point of view. Such data suggest the need to deal with said issue so as to spread an assessment culture able to promote the use of best practices of assessment and training within the school context.