AVALIAÇÃO NO ENSINO E APRENDIZAGEM DE INGLÊS PARA CRIANÇAS: proposta colaborativa na formação docente
Applied Linguistics. Evaluation. English Language. Continuing Education. Evaluative tools.
This research is linked to Applied Linguistics and aimed to investigate how teachers of English Language for Children from public schools in Sorriso/MT and participants of the Centro Municipal de Formação para Profissionais da Educação understand the evaluation process in their classes and use formative moments to discuss about assessment. Moreover, by means of an interventional proposal, we intended to build a collaborative continuing education process that resulted in evaluative educational instruments with the purpose of helping during the process of teaching, learning and assessment of the English language in the classroom. Therefore, we aimed at answering the following research questions: 1) what perceptions does a group of English language teachers from public schools in Sorriso/MT have about the theme "assessment in teaching and learning"? 2) How can a continuing education course contribute to the elaboration of an educational instrument focused on the assessment of English language learning? As regards to the methodological contribution, the study is characterized by a qualitative-interpretativist approach and we employed different instruments to capture and generate data, such as interviews, questionnaire, quick assessment of evidence, audio/video recordings, and field diary. The results indicate that the teachers understand evaluation as a process and not only as a result of their teaching, but they have difficulties in elaborating and organizing solid linguistic criteria and clear objectives regarding the language teaching and learning process to evaluate their students. As far as the construction of the evaluation tools is concerned, we believe that they are important to implement the evaluation process and reduce subjectivity, since the construction of two educational evaluation tools (a grid of criteria and a rubric) could contribute to guarantee more reliability and validity to the evaluation process. The continuing education course specific to the area of evaluation in the teaching and learning of CLIL showed evidence that the teacher needs to have theoretical and practical knowledge about evaluation both during initial training and after leaving the academy to work in schools. We consider that the proposed objectives were achieved competently because we were able to identify the conceptions of the participating teachers regarding assessment in the English language for children, to promote discussions and reflections in order to adapt and improve the assessment practices, and to contribute with helpful tools to be used in the daily routine of teachers.