Abstract:

In recent decades, the scientific literature has gradually shifted its attention from a purely summative approach, excessively focused on the mere certification of learning achieved by students, to a more qualitative one, opening up to dimensions such as the Assessment for Learning (AfL) (Sambell et al ., 2013) and Sustainable Assessment (SA) (Boud, 2000). Renewing the evaluation practices aimed at students requires a preliminary step: transforming the training courses of in-service teachers into the direction of communities of practices fueled by collaborative activities and by a constant comparison of one's own professionalism embodied in the creative and planning actions prompted by the course itself.

The contribution presents a teacher training program firmly anchored to a theoretical model that sees its beating heart in collaborative reflective processes, the Trialogical Learning & Assessment Approach (TL&AA; Sansone & Grion, 2022), an integrated model of teaching, learning and assessment where sustainable and formative assessment processes are enhanced. The TL&AA represents a theoretical evolution of the Trialogical Learning Approach (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005). By re-reading numerous university teaching practices inspired by the trialogical approach through the frameworks of the Assessment for Learning (Bloxham & Boyd, 2007; Grion & Serbati, 2019) and the Sustainable Approach (Boud, 2000), the authors have highlighted the evaluation aspects intrinsic in each of the 6 Design Principles of the original model, thus giving life to a unified model where teaching, learning and assessment integrate and combine involving the student at every step. The path described is that of the 1st level Master's degree "Technologies for learning and for the development of skills" (TASK), provided in e-Learning mode by the Unitelma Sapienza University of Rome. During the Master, learners - teachers - are involved in a multiplicity of activities that solicit their active involvement through specific teaching devices (e.g. digital portfolios, learning diaries, rubrics, exemplars, discussions among peers and with experts) which support reflective processes in a double direction: inward, i.e. one's own learning path and participation in class and group activities, and outward, i.e. the products being created and the learning community to which they belong.

The studies conducted so far on the evaluation-reflective processes of the Master TASK show, on the one hand, how the proposed peer-assessment activities stimulate a strengthening of critical thinking, metacognition, motivation to learn, thus acting on the more general feeling of belonging to a community of practices (Sansone et al, 2021); on the other hand, how the ongoing reflection devices envisaged by the course solicit inward critical-analytical observation processes, towards one's own universe of past and future actions, current and desired learning, professional development and exit from a populated comfort zone of known practices, tools and knowledge, towards a world of risky possibilities, but perhaps precisely for this reason perceived as fascinating: “I was able to reflect on the world of school and on the road it is following. Perhaps with our contribution, in our small way, we can change something”.

Keywords:

Assessment for learning, teachers' training, trialogical learning approach, reflective process.