News
Group actions in December
12/18/2021
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The Conversation Circles - Education in Pandemic Times, which had Assessment: the transition and its implications as its theme, were in the news at O Perobal (see the article here ). The event was held by the Research Project Covid-19: Experiences and Reports, with avaliAção e Linguagem Group support .
The videos are available on our YouTube channel. Check it out here .
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Feeling the holiday season and as a way of thanking you for following our work, we have prepared a video that summarizes our conversations. Please, feel free to download the pdf and share the materials.
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We wish you all happy festivities! And may we continue to grow together in 2022!
Campaign "Telling stories, transforming lives"
May 19, 2021
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Aiming at promoting storytelling in English in cities in the state of Paraná, APLIEPAR (Association of English teachers from the state of Paraná) has organized a campaign of collective funding. Through the donations, the association will distribute books and build "reading suitcases" which will be given to the cities of Apucarana, Assis Chateaubriand, Brasilândia do Sul, Cornélio Procópio, Ibati, Paula Freitas and Pitangueiras. avaliAção e Linguagem (Assessment and Language) is one of the supporters of this campaign, and we count on your support as well! To donate, click here.
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On the APLIEPAR website you will find more information about the campaign and its other supporters.
Summary of the first ENAPE and videos available on YouTube
May 6, 2021
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The first ENAPE has ended and it yielded very rich discussions, reflections and exchanges. In this report of the event, we highlight the themes that stood out, and we give voice mainly to our participants, who were our main source of inspiration in planning and organizing this meeting.
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During the lives, the discussions frequently turned to the challenges of assessment in online contexts.
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[The comments read, in general terms: "I have rethought a lot about assessment because of remote teaching", "Online teaching has forced teachers to think of other assessment tools besides tests", "There is a need to be more sensitive to students' needs at this time", "Online assessment seems more effective than on-site assessment", "We will not be the same when we go back to on-site classes".]
We also discussed the student role in the learning-assessment-teaching process. Some of the most frequent themes were the need for sharing and negotiation between teacher and students and the relevance of peer assessment.
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[The comments read, in general terms: "I negotiated online classes with my students, since everything in remote teaching was new", "Peer assessment is an excellent resource for teaching and assessment", "It's important to share and negotiate assessment with students".]
Many participants mentioned the importance of assessment literacy among several stakeholders of the educational process, especially teachers.
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[The comments read, in general terms: "I really liked the term 'assessment literacy'", "Many teachers and students lack assessment literacy", "Assessment literacy is of utmost importance", "All stakeholders should be assesment literate", "Teacher education should involve learning about assesment".]
We, from the avaliAção e Linguagem (Assessment and Language) research group, are very grateful for the opportunity to share some of our work and for realizing that assessment is a topic of interest for other people as well. We thank the Nead team at UEM for our partnernship, since they offered us all the technical support for the event, and also for our partnership with the Felice group. The event's talks, in Portuguese, are already available on our YouTube channel.
Finally, we end this piece of news with the feedback from our participants, which will definitely be taken as feedforward and as plenty of motivation for future events. Thank you, everyone!
[The comments read, in general terms: "Thank you for the event", "Time flies with you guys", "I will miss the event", "The discussions in this event were very relevant", "We need more talks like these".
What we've been up to in March
April 20, 2021
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The month of March was full of learning moments and enriching exchanges for the members of avaliAção e Linguagem. Two language assessment workshops were carried out: one by the Master’s student Giovanna Fernandes, titled “The challenges of assessment”, focusing on the teachers of the university’s Languages Lab; and another by PhD student Isadora Moraes, titled “Workshop in assessment for English teacher educators: promoting academic literacy”, which has as its target audience the English teacher educators from institutions partnered with LILA (Integrated Laboratory of Academic-Scientific Literacies).
The first workshop, which was given by Giovanna in collaboration with Viviane (the group’s supervisor) and Isadora, dealt with topics such as the goal of assessment, students’ role in the assessment process, formative assessment, and the importance of coherence between objectives, tools and criteria. The workshop was developed based on participants’ answers to a diagnostic questionnaire.
[The image reads: Assessment must accommodate goals, tools and criteria.]
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To professor Cláudia Cristina Ferreira, who works at the State University of Londrina and is also coordinator of the institution’s Languages Lab, the workshop was “useful and valid, considering we discussed objectives, goals and types of assessment, assessment tools and criteria, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of remote assessment.” According to her, “the reflections and the interaction during the workshop made us rethink our attitudes and view of assessment, which had positive consequences to our practicum, benefitting both teachers and students in the process of teaching and learning.”
Vanessa Araujo, professor of Italian and Portuguese for speakers of other languages at the university’s Languages Lab, inquires and reflects about other aspects of the workshop in her testimonial. She firstly ponders about the frequency with which language teachers reflect about assessment in their classes: “I can almost affirm that we think a lot about the teaching-learning process, but assessment, to my view, is just as important, and it is what in fact guides our decisions when it comes to student learning and our own teaching.” Vanessa reports having reviewed theoretical concepts of assessment and learned new ones, such as LOLA (Learning Oriented Language Assessment), which was part of her practice but she was not aware of the term. The participant also states that “the workshop was very well-structured”, making use of a questionnaire, videos, readings, debates and discussions that were extremely relevant for Vanessa’s continuing education. She concludes by saying that “a foreign languages teacher doesn’t just teach the language, but also the act of being in the world. I thank Giovanna, Isadora and my professor and friend Viviane very much.”
The second workshop is still underway, and the participants have been discussing the concept of assessment present in their courses’ Pedagogical Projects, as well as the space reserved for assessment in their contexts. The next steps involve an analysis of the courses’ programs and the development of rubrics for the most common academic genres.
[The image reads: In a Gretchen scale, how do you classify your assessment experiences (as a student and/or as a teacher)?]
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Elisângela Liberatti, professor at the State University of Londrina, reports that she is profiting a lot from the workshop, because, “among other matters, I learned the concept of inverted symmetry, also known as indirect education. Inverted symmetry makes us see assessment through other eyes, especially for those of us who work with teacher education, that is, what and how we assess indirectly influences how our students, future teachers, will deal with their own students’ assessment. I’m really enjoying the rich exchanges enabled by the workshop!”
Similarly, Thais Balbino, teacher at the city of Ibiporã, states that the workshop has been “inspiring me to change as soon as possible my teaching practices in relation to assessment so as to improve and facilitate learning for my students. Being able to contribute to and be in accordance with educational policy documents from the institution where I work is invigorating, and this will definitely influence other teachers who, like myself, need assessment literacy.”
[The image reads: Guiding questions for the analysis of policy documents, which include considerations about the goal of assessment, when it is carried out, who uses it, what tools are used to measure students’ performance, how results are used and registered, and the role of feedback.]
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Would you also like to improve your assessment literacy? Don’t forget to watch the videos of the first ENAPE (Assessment in Perspective Meeting), which will be available on our YouTube channel starting May 6, 2021. Don’t forget to subscribe!
Videos from the I ENAPE will be available starting May 6, 2021
April 14, 2021
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Professor Dr. Viviane Furtoso, supervisor of the avaliAção e Linguagem (Language and Assessment) research group, was interviewed by O Perobal and Rádio UEL (starting from minute 17, in Portuguese) about the event organized by the group, the I ENAPE (Encontro de Avaliação em Perspectiva - Assessment in Perspective Meeting). In the latter interview, the professor provides updated information about the event: its 300 spots have been filled out, therefore registration is now closed. However, the videos of the talks will be available to the general public starting May 6, 2021, in our YouTube channel.
In an interview to UEM (State University of Maringá), the institution that is proposing the event with UEL (State University of Londrina), professor Josimayre Novelli explains that the great interest in the topic is mainly due to the pandemic having highlighted even more the need for discussions and reflection about assessment, now that it happens in an online context. To the professor, "assessment can't be seen as an end in itself, as a product, but as a process towards learning."
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The talks of the event (in Portuguese) will be about the following themes: general assessment concepts, ethics and assessment, remote assessment, assessing young learners, development of rubrics, assessment tools, development of test items, feeedback, self-assessment and peer-assessment.
We thank everyone for their interest and we hope to be able to continue this conversation about assessment. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel!
Registration is open for the I ENAPE
March 31, 2021
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Registration is now open for the I ENAPE - Encontro de Avaliação em Perspectiva (Assessment in Perspective Meeting), the first event organized by the avaliAção e Linguagem (Assessment and Language) Research Group, a partnership between Universidade Estadual de Londrina (State University of Londrina) and Universidade Estadual de Maringá (State University of Maringá). There is no registration fee and the event will take place from April 27-30, with live sessions at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. We will address several relevant themes to the area of assessment, such as general concepts, development of rubrics, remote assessment tools, self-assessment and feedback, among others. There will be 8 talks of 30 minutes each, followed by 30 minutes of live interaction and debate with the audience. For those who are unable to watch live, the talks and interactions with the audience will be recorded and stored in the Moodle platform until May 5, 2021. Do not miss out on this opportunity to improve your assessment literacy!
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Register here until April 26.
For more information, please refer to our YouTube channel or Events section.
AvaliAção e Linguagem is born!
February 21, 2021
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We are delighted and boasting with pride to announce the official creation of the avaliAção e Linguagem (Assessment and Language) Research Group, along with this website and our YouTube channel.
Our main goals with these platforms involve disseminating our work, sharing doubts and wishes (as well as efforts and moments of joy), promoting advancements in discussions and ideas, establishing partnerships, and contributing theoretically to the field of language assessment, as well as within classroom practice, helping teachers and students view assessment as a great ally in the educational journey.
Welcome!
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