Abstract

VARGAS QUINTERO, María Victoria. The pedagogical sense of assessment. A case study at the Faculty of Sciences of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Univ. Sci. [online]. 2008, vol.13, n.3, pp.252-257. ISSN 0122-7483.

Educational assessment is an activity which is supported on a pedagogical foundation related to all human dimensions, in particular the cognitive, emotional and social spheres. Because of the above reasons, assessment is a complex task. As it is de-contextualized from its fundamentals and simplified, assessment loses its pedagogical sense; this is what happens when it is reduced to routines apparently detached from its objectives. At the cognitive level assessment has a formative as well as a diagnostic dimension. When the diagnostic dimension prevails in the assessment, marking is over dimensioned and formative aspects are therefore ignored. Three different conflicts were found in the studied group. The first one refers to undertaking assessments that have no sense for students. The second one refers to the lack of pedagogical sense in the assessment process. And the third one refers to an assessment process which is not integral but instead focuses in the cognitive dimension only.

Keywords : assessment dimensions; the sense of assessment; university assessment; formative assessment.

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )