ASSESSMENT IN EDUCATION: JUSTICE, EQUITY OR STANDARDIZATION?

In education assessment, teachers seem to be always trapped in between punishing or rewarding their students, making some special concessions for those at risk, or being totally controlled by standard methods of learning evaluation. Are there differences between these three? Is there an equilibrium point that balances their benefits and diminish their cons? Can we put the accent in the quality of the assessment goals as to really use it for strengthen our student´s learning ability?

In this paper, the authors review the three assessment options, justice as it is, equity and how it can be applied within the margins of justice, and the standardization methods modern world is pressuring teachers and institutions towards; and compare those options to the University of Guadalajara (UdeG) model of education, its exit profiles and competencies set for the baccalaureate education level in both the national education project in Mexico, and the UdeG´s, both their curricular maps, and the education principles them both establish for this level of education.

Then the authors analyze the most important principles Neuroscience has discovered about human learning so far, to conclude teachers are accomplishing more than “instructing a discipline”, and are actually contributing to their student´s cognitive development in terms of their neurogenesis, their synaptic plasticity and the expansion of their human connectome.

Having explored the education model and principles, the education goals set in the exit profile declarations both UdeG´s and national, and the principles of neuroscience findings in human learning, the authors contrast those main items against the principles of justice assessment, equity in assessment and standardized assessment, and whether they adequate to the educational model and curriculum design in baccalaureate.

From there they call teachers to evaluate for comprehension –students own comprehension, and their comprehension towards others-, through self-assessment, formative assessment, and metacognition, which they consider the qualitative heart of education assessment, whichever style assessment they choose to apply.