Andrea Goldin, about the difficulties of carrying out assessments at schools: "It standardizes everybody"

Andrea Goldin, profesora de las Maestrías y Especializaciones en Educación e integrante del Laboratorio de Neurociencia, participó del proyecto Learning Sciences Exchange, organizado por las fundaciones New America, de Estados Unidos, y Jacobs Foundation, de Suiza, donde formó parte del Afternoon Panel #2 y habló sobre el rol de la evaluación en la escuela.  

“What do we assess for? We evaluate to know if something worked. In research it is quite perfect to do it, it is very straightforward and the limitations are clear. We understand that every person is different, but we want to capture the cognitive processes that all humans from a population share. So, to use one assessment for all is pretty much correct in that dimension”, explicó la profesora.

“But, when we think about assessments at schools, it is quite different. We also want to use them because we need to understand if the students understood and, most importantly, if they can apply what they learnt, if they can apply it correctly. But we have like 30-20 people in one room. So, at the end, there is this problem that it standardizes everybody. We end up not knowing if something actually worked for everybody or not, or for most of them or not”, agregó Goldin.