EVALUATION OF CONCEPT LEARNING

Abstract

Results of a research investigating concepts, practices and perspectives of conceptual learning evaluation in a school context are provided. The evaluation of three situations, or rather, contemporary theoretical productions, education documents and evaluation concepts and practices of junior school teachers, was analyzed through bibliographical studies and interviews. Data analysis identified a deep similarity between evaluation concepts in the three above-mentioned contexts in which predominates a concern of going beyond an authoritarian and selective evaluation at the end of the teaching process. New types of evaluation forms, of a diagnostic, continuous and formative type, have been suggested to establish more democratic evaluations committed to the students’ learning. Investigations on the understanding of the conceptual learning process are needed so that an improvement could be undertaken in these suggestions. Inferences in theorizations by Vygotsky and Leontiev on concept formation have been undertaken for theoretical and methodological subsidies to foreground teacher activities in evaluation, keeping in mind the contents that should be externalized by the student as learning indicators.