Learning assessment at the university: a crossroad between institutionalized practice and progressive trends

Abstract

Learning assessment is usually a complex, conflictive practice. Understanding its complex structure as well as its controversial nature implies the observation of its instrumental aspects together with the analysis of highly complex institutional and subjective structures. As put forth by several scholarly forums, assessment is an institutionalized activity within the education system in general, and at university levels in particular, which has not been explicitly stated by its agents, though. Historically, assessment seems to have functioned as an imposed regulation aiming at providing certifications rather than as a tool for understanding and qualifying learning processes. Just as important, in my subjective view as a university teacher with 20-year experience, assessment has arisen as an unsolved problem and has been mainly dealt with as bureaucratic strategies. In order to tackle assessment in institutional terms, the french institutionalist currents, which relate a dialectic approach to the analysis of organizational dynamics, seem to be appropriate. Within this approach, the distinction between ‘institutionalized’ and ‘progressive’ arises as key concepts. Institutionalized practice implies what is already established and the tendency to keep it, whereas progressive trends entail questioning established practices and a tendency to transform them.