Assessment as learning mediation: beyond a classifying and exclusionary evaluative perspective

Abstract

This article aims to uncover a sense of assessment from a mediation perspective, based on Jussara Hoffman’s ideas. She considers the evaluative process in harmony with teaching and learning, rather than as a separate, fragmented, or decontextualized moment of formative path. This position diverges from the understanding of classifying, excluding, and labeling students through rankings that do not reflect the school knowledge they have experienced. To this end, the methodology is a qualitative research approach, a bibliographic type one, and interpretative in nature. The results indicate that institutions that persist in positivist evaluative logics collaborate to reproduce social inequalities when students are labeled, classified, and stigmatized. From an opposing perspective, it is understood that assessment should move towards promoting teaching and learning, not in an isolated, punitive way or as an end. It is concluded that Hoffman’s texts indicate solid meanings for thinking about a new epistemology of assessment, as an integral part and not as an isolated moment in the students’ formative processes.