Porque ninguém escuta a gente! Jovens, avaliação em larga escala e cotidiano escolar, entre significados e sentidos

Abstract

What do young people think about large-scale evaluations? This was the question that guided the process of constructing this research. Born from the daily routine of History classes and based on a frequent concern about the mismatches caused by educational evaluation policies, this work focuses on the impact of these programs, especially when they aim at achieving results and performances through rankings. Based on a formative assessment, whose focus is not on competition but on human formation, the idea defended here seeks to incorporate a perspective of observing the student as a whole and the centrality of his/her relationship with knowledge, not just as numbers in statistics, but as individuals who retain singularities and subjectivities. This work focuses on the dynamics of large-scale evaluation policies in order to think about the impacts of these programs in the daily routine of schools and inside classrooms. With a closer look on the evaluations adopted by the state of Rio de Janeiro, the SAERJS and Saerjinhos, this work takes into account a specific public, not included in the scope of the researches, that arise the student body. In this sense, guaranteeing that the voices of these subjects are heard, as they are an interested party in the educational process, this work analyses, through focus groups, the narratives of young people who attend the last year of High School, in a city in the interior of the State of Rio de Janeiro, in order to try to understand their positions regarding public policies; how they evaluate their experiences with the standardized tests of the State of Rio de Janeiro (SAERJ and Saerjinho) and how they bring these experiences forth in the daily routine of the school. Considering the theme of institutional evaluation as controversial in academic space, this work poses the debate around the issue, showing on one hand the arguments of authors such as Ernest House, Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro and the academic production of CAED / JF, which indicate the public policies as essential for the achievement of education of good quality. On the other hand, field researchers such as Antonio Almerindo Janela Affonso, Antônio Veiga-Neto and Clarice Salete Traversini highlight the problems of these large-scale evaluations when used obsessively and mistakenly. In the light of authors such as Walter Benjamim and Marc Bloch, this work supports a view of History that is a non linear and challenging. Through authors such as Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire and Darcy Ribeiro, this work prioritizes a kind of education that is focused on humans and their whole development as a counterpoint to evaluation policies. Regarding the question of learning, it presents a complexization between the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Bernard Charlot and Bernard Lahire to understand the relationships of young people with knowledge. Listening to young people in the context of this research and considering what they think about schools, educational processes and evaluation demonstrates the high relevance of the considerations made by these students, who, amidst the problems faced by public education, have consistent elements to present.