Devising fair assessment contexts
Résumé
National and international statistics clearly show that in France and in several other countries in the OECD, the social groups that pupils belong to determine the length and the nature of their school education. How can such differences in achievement be explained? A considerable amount of research has been published on this issue, and in some cases, genetic explanations have been put forward (Herrnstein et Murray, 1995) whereas in others environmentalist or societal explanations are proposed (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1964). However, one particular theoretical perspective found in social educational psychology takes a very different standpoint, arguing that pupil performance may be determined by the representations the pupils have built of themselves (Bandura, 1986). More precisely, these studies show that the assessment context may interact with the individuals’ representations of themselves: the context is thus felt to be threatening and performances are affected. Several studies focussing on this perspective (e.g., Steele & Aronson, 1995 ; Croizet & Claire, 1998 ; Souchal, Toczek, Darnon, Smeding, Butera & Martinot, 2013) will be presented at the third international conference on educational monitoring and evaluation.