Analysis of Future Teachers’ Perceptions on the Evaluation of Learning: A Case Study of Chile

Abstract

Practising teachers and future Chilean teachers show weaknesses in developing learning evaluation processes efficiently. The polysemic concept of evaluation in Initial Teacher Training (FID, Spanish acronym for Initial Teacher Training) is one of the main difficulties for the students of pedagogy as well as their limited possibilities to implement practical evaluation processes. In this context, the present work analyses the perceptions of 189 students from different pedagogy careers (Chile) on the evaluation of learning. The current study is descriptive research with a quantitative approach in which a questionnaire was designed and used as research instrument to address the conceptual, functional and experiential dimensions of the evaluation. The results indicate that the perceptions of the evaluation of the students are up to date and according to specialised literature. Likewise, the results show that the training experiences are based on traditional perceptions, such as the control and value given to the evaluation instrument. However, there were statistically significant differences between the groups which were measured by the Kruskal-Wallis H test. The projection of the study leads us to suggest that for the training of future teachers, instances of reflective action in the evaluation should be considered, based on professional practices. The recognition of educational communities and their environments is necessary to give rise to an evaluative praxis that relates the perceptions of students to the practical implementation of the evaluation processes to have a favourable impact on the training of future teachers.