SIGNIFICADOS E FUN ES DA AVALIA O DA APRENDIZAGEM ESCOLAR

This dissertation consists of a qualitative exploratory study whose objectivewas to identify and analyze meanings and functions of student’s schoollearning through evaluation/assessment in elementary and secondary (middle)school levels based on parents’, teachers’ and students’ understanding. The datawas collected by using the focal group technique and the sample included nineteensubjects: six students, six teachers, and seven parents. Debates were carried outin contexts of two schools from the city of Chapecó, in West of the State of SantaCatarina. The individuals approached the topic by discussing five questions. Responseswere analyzed and interpreted by the researcher, which permitted to enterand better comprehend the complexity of phenomena imbricated in the relationsbetween teaching, learning and evaluation of students’ school learning. Similaritiesand differences between parents’, teachers’ and students’ understanding onschool learning evaluation are identified in the results of the study. Similaritiesinclude: importance of grades to approve or fail students at the end of a period ofstudy, the meaning of evaluation as exams, tests and tasks done by students to geta grade, comparison, classification and selection of students, evaluation as reproductionof social and market values enforced inside schools because of the systemand as a curriculum component that is able to show the degree of content retentionand the quality of students’ behavior. School learning evaluation is mostly used inthe sense of grade and not for providing meaningful feedback on students’ levelof mastery. Differences are derived from subjects’ perspectives due to their conditionof being parents, teachers or students. Parents understand school learningevaluation as a grade that indicates the degree of academic and professional successtheir children will achieve in the future; teachers understand school learningevaluation based on students’ hic et nunc (here and now) condition of being and asa complex normative curriculum component that makes them continuously choosebetween process and result rationales; students understand school learning evaluationas verification of content mastery and adequacy of behavior that is carried outthrough contradictory methods and procedures, which can affect their life insideand outside school, now and in the future.