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How Do the Teachers Construct Meanings during Grading Process? Study of Teachers’ Judgement in Practice

Sun, August 13, 10:30am to 12:10pm, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 511B

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 20th century, works in docimology have shown systematic biases influencing teacher’s grading processes (e.g., Noizet & Caverni, 1978). These scientific works assume that an “objective” and “fair” grade exists, even if the results systematically show that this is not the case. We believe that this approach leads to an impasse: school grading system can not be theorized as an “objective measure”. Today, an alternative approach is to conceive of teacher’s assessment judgement as an activity of production of meanings and values, shaped by processes of “referentialization” specific to the assessment activity, such as a social, cultural and situated practice.

In the French-speaking community of researchers in education assessment, concepts are developed to take into account the relationship between assessment criteria (called referents, components of assessment frame of reference) and observables or signs in the student’s answer selected by the assessor (called referes, Hadji, 1989). Processing of assessment reference is called “referentialization” (Figari & Remaud, 2014), for instance when new meaning of pre-defined assessment criteria emerged during grading process. These concepts seek to study the assessment activity as it is developing through situated practices.

Our works study “referentialization” in classroom assessment practices of primary school teachers (students from six to 12 years old) in their authentic context, and “social moderations” (Morales Villabona & Mottier Lopez, 2016) that bring together teachers in order to confront their assessment choices and situated judgements. In a qualitative way, our works show different phenomena linked to referentializating processes, notably how teachers combine pre-existent and emergent referents linked to several contexts, such as classroom micro-culture, school culture, wider professional culture. We try to interpret these phenomena in a “professional judgement perspective” (Allal, 2012; Laveault, 2008; Mottier Lopez & Tessaro, 2016), that is, linked with ethical rules of the profession of teacher.

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