“Eu Avalio o Aluno Como um Todo" : Problematizando a Avaliação Invisível

Abstract

The focus of the case study undertaken for my doctoral thesis was the issue of lack of discipline and violence among adolescents (8th and 9th graders) in basic education in the Rio de Janeiro public school network. However, it soon became clear that assessment and disciplinary control practices were being confused in the environment in question. There were frequent threats of "losing points" to address lack of classroom discipline, tests were applied as punishment for disruptive classes, and the behavioral factor was emphasized in pass/fail discussions during class meetings. The thesis maintained the focus on matters of discipline and violence among adolescent students. In this article, however, the issue of assessment is discussed, based on the records of that same study. The discussion is not so much on the perceived overlap between assessment and discipline, but rather the concept of assessment that contextualizes and legitimates it: the ongoing, global student assessment that is official in the city’s public teaching network. To that end, the notion of invisible pedagogy, as defined by English sociologist Basil Bernstein, will be considered, as well as two contributions from the inter-cultural educational perspective, as developed by Professor Vera Candau: the insistence on daily academic intercultural dialog and the criticism of fundamentalist practices in education. The failure to make the criteria explicit compromises the diagnostic purpose of assessment, which tends to operate from a fundamentalist perspective, analyzing diffuse images of students rather than their objective output. The conclusion highlights the importance of democratization and transparency in defining the assessment criteria of student performance, as well as a criticism of fundamentalism in assessment procedures, in order for it to exercise its primary function of regulating academic teaching-learning processes.