Social representations of evaluation in two high schools in Guadalajara, Mexico

Abstract

The aim of this study was to describe the social representations of evaluation in two Institutions of Secondary Education in Guadalajara, Mexico. The identified research problem was the fact that the agents of the educational community lack understanding of a coherent methodological and conceptual framework for the alignment of the purposes of evaluation and its pedagogical orientations. A qualitative case study was carried out taking as sample the different agents of the educational communities involved. Methods of data collection included survey, non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews. It was found that the social representations of evaluation and its practices work parallelly or complementarily to the norms defined by the school government, on which there is also little dominion or resistance.