Avaliação no ensino superior: pistas para pensar as concepções e práticas avaliativas

Abstract

Understanding what evaluation is, as well as understanding that it is part of pedagogical practice, can help with the necessary reflections for changes in current educational processes. In the act of teaching and learning, the ways in which the teacher plans, executes and evaluates are intertwined. It is found in the teacher's practice all his life trajectory, including his formative processes. They also are influenced by external agents, such as government and public policies. Thus, it is questioned at what moments the teacher reflects and discusses the evaluation of teaching and learning as they understand the evaluation as a fundamental part of the educational action and this aspect is undervalued in the university professor formation. This research has as main objective to instigate professors to reflect on the conceptions and evaluative practices carried out in their undergraduate courses. For this, we question: What are the possible effects on the conceptions and practices of university professors when they reflect on the evaluation of the teaching-learning they carry out? For the development of this qualitative study, we used action-research with seven professors from the undergraduate courses at the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel) and from different areas of knowledge. For the production of the data, in 2021, eight meetings on evaluation were held, which took place in a virtual way due to the imposition of the remote teaching system by the advent of the Covid-19 Pandemic.The meetings were recorded on videos, transcribed and understood from Bardin's content analysis (2011). After this stage, we obtained three major categories: 1. Trajectory, training and teaching work: constituent elements of university pedagogy; 2. Assessment of teaching-learning: types, forms and purposes; 3. Research, the strength of the collective and UFPel. As main results we can highlight the evaluation of teaching and learning is a complex pedagogical element and still little treated during training for teaching in higher education, being (re)thought from contexts that emerge during the teacher's professional path, such as remote learning; assessment during the development of curricular components was considered an important path for student learning. The variety and quantity of evaluations used in this route indicate the tendency of the collective to seek evaluations in a procedural way. However, we identified challenges that make this way of evaluating difficult, considering that traditional teaching is still on pedagogical actions in most educational institutions; the conditions of teaching work, with large groups of students; the relationship with peers who are resistant to change and also the neoliberal logic, present in the most diverse forms of assessment, from large-scale assessments to school assessments. After the Meetings on Evaluation, we can say that when we encourage teachers to reflect on their pedagogical concepts and practices, focusing on the evaluations they carry out in the classroom, changes may occur. Finally, we highlight the power of a work based on critical-collaborative action-research. The research brought together a small group of teachers willing to reflect on pedagogical practices. Perhaps the great challenge for future research and actions is to find clues on how to mobilize other professors to reflect on the constituent elements of university pedagogy.