Engineering Students’ Utterances about Evaluation and Its Roles in the Courses of Physics and Calculus

Abstract

Context: Assessment could provide feedback to both students and teachers on teaching and learning processes. However, this perspective coexists with an evaluation dynamic focused on performance and results. Objectives: This research intends to problematize what a group of Engineering students says about the evaluation processes and their purposes in Mathematics and Physics subjects, offered in the context of remote teaching. Design: Ideas from qualitative research in a Foucauldian perspective. Environment and participants: The sample consisted of 85 engineering students, enrolled in Physics and Calculus subjects, in the first semester of 2021. Data collection and analysis: Application of an online questionnaire, with six Physics or Calculus classes, in a community university of Rio Grande do Sul. Results: The discourse analysis according to the Foucauldian perspective produced two analysis units that indicate how the eighty-seven participating students conceive evaluation in their utterances. The first one indicates that they think evaluation enables their own learning to be monitored and assessed, and decisions to be made by professors. The other one points out that students conceive evaluation as classifying and meritocratic, focusing on performance, outcomes, and grade measurement. Conclusions: Contradictory and complementary conceptions coexist, indicative of the different roles attributed to assessment in formal education contexts. In general, the research participants evidence the reproduction of statements that circulate socially about the evaluation and its roles. Such results can be productive for teachers and institutions to understand that they also meet the expectations of an evaluation system with an emphasis on regulation and control.