Abstract:

In the last decades of the 20th century, we have seen that the assessment of learning has begun to be recognised as a guiding element in teaching.

However, at school, already in the 21st century, teachers still have a need to rethink the way they teach in order to focus attention on students' learning, keeping assessment limited to a measurement which is indispensable for the classification of their students.

Assessing presupposes reflecting on learning. It should allow the teacher to monitor the student and identify their difficulties and progress and should also allow for intervention in the course of students' learning, improving it ( William, 2011, Paixão, Silveira & Lopes, 2019).

This study is based on a systematic theoretical review of a qualitative, descriptive and analytical-interpretative nature, analysing studies published in journals indexed in international reference databases with a view to increasing knowledge and understanding about assessment for learning. In our study, we focus on Web of Science, B-On and Latindex by choosing the following descriptors combined two by two: assessment and teaching, assessment and learning, formative assessment and feedback, assessment and basic education, with the aim of identifying and analysing which assessment concepts and practices are more salient in the assessment of students' learning in the time span 2010-2020 and to understand how this concept and the practice of assessment of learning evolved over this period.

As inclusion criteria for the selection of our corpus of analysis, we only considered studies focused on the concepts and practices of student learning assessment, in which the participants were primary school teachers and students, published in English, Spanish and Portuguese, with at least one keyword matching the search terms.

After the selection through the keywords, combined two by two, and adopting, in a first phase as a search base: the Web of Science, the inclusion criteria and the temporal filter (2010-2020), we obtained a total of 592 articles, after analysing the titles and abstracts of the articles in order to select only the studies that we considered relevant to achieve the objectives of our study. Subsequently, using B-On as a reference database and proceeding in the same way, we obtained a total of 11491 articles with the abovementioned descriptors, from which 29 were selected for further analysis.

After the analysis of the selected articles that constitute the corpus of analysis, this section was divided into three themes: dichotomy between formative and summative assessment, the importance of feedback in formative assessment, the role of the student and the teacher in formative assessment.

The results concerning the period of analysis 2010-2020 point to an assessment in basic education practiced in a perspective of student learning and integrated in continuity, in the teaching-learning process. They also point to an increasing importance of the formative role in assessment in order to guide the teaching and learning process of teachers and students, feedback being recognized as a crucial role in formative assessment, and highlighting the roles of the teacher and the student as active elements in the assessment process.

References:
[1] William,D.( 2011) " Embedded formative assessment". Bloomington USA: Solution Tree Press

Keywords:

Assessment, teaching/assessment, learning/formative assessment, feedback/assessment, primary education.