Pedagogical Assessment in Higher Education: The Importance of Training

Abstract

The diversity of students reaching higher education, the skills required of the 21st-century citizen, the Bologna Declaration, and the pressure exerted by international organizations impose a pedagogical reconfiguration of teaching, learning, and assessment through the recognition of the pedagogical dimension as a component of teacher professional development. We present the results of a study conducted at a university in Portugal with the following objectives: identifying conceptions and practices of pedagogical assessment and determining the influence of pedagogical training on these conceptions and practices. An online questionnaire (pre- and post-test) was administered to 31 teachers who had taken part in a training course on pedagogical assessment. It was found that: nearly half of the teachers experience difficulties in pedagogical assessment, with fairness being the main issue; the most commonly used instruments are written tests, research assignments, and reports; around two-thirds of teachers change the way they assess students, with the nature of the curricular units being the most influential factor in this decision; and there has been a change in the concept of assessment, in which the strict idea of testing, measuring, and classifying students’ knowledge has been replaced by the gathering of information for decision-making about the teaching and learning process.