A noção de avaliação da aprendizagem no ensino superior: percepções de docente e estudantes do curso de letras de uma instituição pública

Abstract

The general objective of this research is to investigate the conception of assessment adopted in a course dedicated to the study of normative Portuguese grammar in the Languages Course at a federal public university, as well as the understanding of students who take this course on the function of assessment, by assuming that it is clear that the assessment and teaching-learning processes are directly related. This general objective is subdivided into more specific ones: i) to verify how normative grammar was approached in such course; ii) to investigate the professor’s conception of assessment who teaches this course; iii) to analyze the evaluation instruments used by that professor; iv) analyze students' perceptions about the applied assessments activities; v) observe to what extent the assessments practices exerted influence on the teaching process of the focused course. The work seeks theoretical support mainly for studies on evaluation by Perrenoud (1999) and Luckesi (2011a, 2011b); to discuss the influence of assessment on students learning, the theories of Alderson & Wall (1993) and Scaramucci (2006, 2011) and, to address issues of grammar teaching, the discussions of Franchi et al (2006), Antunes (2003, 2007, 2009), Bagno (2003) and Perini (2014). In order to achieve the proposed objectives, we carried out a study of a qualitative nature, more specifically a case study, so we could analyze the assessment of learning in the focused context. Aiming at data triangulation, we used different research instruments: questionnaire, interview, observation of classes and document analysis. The results indicate that the professor who taught the subject developed a work that went beyond the teaching of grammatical rules and classifications, leading students to reflect on the uses of language. In addition, the professor demonstrated to understand the importance of formative assessment, seeking to use assessments to analyze whether his way of working was adequate to achieve the proposed objectives, outlining new strategies when necessary. In the students' perception, the assessments were important for their learning, as they were instruments that made it possible to identify gaps in the understanding of the addressed content. Thus, we verified that the evaluation instruments were used to generate changes in the teaching-learning process, contributing to its improvement.