It was long considered that learning assessment practices should be dissociated from teaching practices.
Students learned, and were then evaluated. This view of learning assessment is in the process of completely changing. School curricula are being revised throughout the world, under various appellations, with the aim that learning should occur under significant and authentic circumstances that resemble the professional or daily reality of the learners.
Teaching practices can no longer be isolated from learning assessment practices.
In the context of the new competency-based approaches, at all levels of education, teaching practices can no longer be isolated from learning assessment practices, which always accompany them. The former must prepare students for the process of learning assessment, while the latter must contribute to the development of learning itself. Through integration, each of these practices increases the range of the other, thus contributing to an improvement in the student’s persistence and school success.
The objective of this research was threefold: to identify the structure of learning assessment practices, to study the evolution of these practices, and to evaluate the extent of their integration with teaching practices. To meet these objectives, data from international studies on mathematics and sciences were analyzed, allowing us to observe that the more significant the assessment practices, the more significant the teaching practices. In addition, teachers and their students responded to a questionnaire in order to determine the extent of integration of these practices. Finally, we observed that the integration of learning assessment and teaching practices was highest in elementary school, but equal at all other levels of education.
Main researcher
Gilles Raîche, Université du Québec à Montréal
Deposit of the research report: July 2011