The belief that pedagogical assessment requires a particular type of instrument or a separate teaching movement tends to prevail over the knowledge that pedagogical assessment is an intrinsic process of teaching that enables teaching to transform into learning. Teaching knowledge is a dynamic corpus consisting of specific scientific knowledge, pedagogic knowledge, and teaching techniques, immersed in values and personal experiences, convictions, and beliefs about, for example, what school and education are, the role of the teacher and students, how lessons and assessments should be organized. In epistemological terms, belief only becomes knowledge when the truth of the proposition is proven (rationally or empirically), leading to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief, necessary and sufficient conditions for epistemic knowledge that apply to all statements of a scientific nature. When teaching, what beliefs do teachers hold about pedagogical assessment and their practices of pedagogical assessment? This is the question that triggers the movement of self-questioning and self-observation of the relationship between beliefs, knowledge, and pedagogical assessment practices regarding epistemic justification in the context of a training workshop from which we investigate the possibility of creating conditions that favor teacher epistemic autonomy and authorship. We adopted a qualitative research paradigm, linked to the foundation of thinking and acting, assuming that reality is not univocal. The research process was activated by the (previous) action of designing/accrediting, implementing, and evaluating a training workshop on pedagogical assessment, in which participating teachers created a teaching portfolio. Subsequently, data collection instruments considered the autobiographical method, involving participants in a process of interpretative reconstruction of their first-person experiences: portfolio and, later, micro narrative and group interview. The data obtained underwent two phases of content analysis, considering four factors: object and context, training modality, dynamics, and product to be produced. The first phase of analysis was based on the concepts of beliefs, practices, and teaching knowledge, validated by external judges, to highlight alignments and tensions in teachers' discourse and to determine if, through training, it is possible to create conditions that favor teacher epistemic autonomy and authorship. In the following phase, the portfolios were analyzed regarding knowledge focuses - tacit, praxical, and epistemic. Ethical and technical procedures resulted in the initial object of 26 portfolios; micro-narratives and group interviews collected data from six teachers. From the triangulation of data obtained from reflective portfolios, micro-narratives, and group interviews, it is evident that participation in the training workshop, the direct involvement of teaching with the premise of the teacher as an investigator of their practice and subsequent portfolio recording were decisive in bringing out the dissonances, tensions, and alignments between beliefs, practices, and knowledge. From the analysis of portfolios on the knowledge focus, it is concluded that no portfolio presents a unique knowledge focus; all portfolios show a praxical focus - identifying justifications (theoretical or practical) for didactic choices, combining the identification of pedagogical intentionality of an activity with expectations of student performance. It is considered that 14 portfolios have a tacit focus, emerging from the exercise centered on action and the daily sharing of concerns about concrete problems with references to typified beliefs about students, situations, or actions. In another 14 portfolios, we observe the simultaneous presence of the epistemic focus, through the narrative of assessment and justification of practices in knowledge, distinguishing beliefs and expectations for predicting and analyzing student results, as a consequence of pedagogical intentionality. Two portfolios present elements of all three focuses. It was also found that the organizational context favorable to professional development and learning emerges as essential - as the training workshop was created out of the expressed need of Schools in the network of partners of the Education Improvement Support Service, FEP/UCP. We conclude that the individual characteristics of these teachers, suggested by Dewey - a state of doubt and restlessness followed by an act of investigation that explains and substantiates or disproves the identified belief, can be activated for teacher epistemic autonomy and authorship through training, with the organizational context being crucial for greater alignment between teachers' beliefs, practices, and knowledge regarding pedagogical assessment.
| Date of Award | 6 May 2024 |
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| Original language | Portuguese |
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| Awarding Institution | - Universidade Católica Portuguesa
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| Supervisor | José Matias Alves (Supervisor) |
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