“Na verdade, tudo mudou, o mundo mudou e não teria como a escola continuar avaliando da mesma forma”: o impacto da pandemia de COVID-19 na prática avaliativa no contexto do ensino de línguas

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, society as a whole had to adapt to physical isolation, and schools were forced to adjust to the challenges of emergency remote teaching. The role of being a teacher during a global pandemic presented various obstacles (MOREIRA; SCHLEMMER, 2020). As the return to in-person teaching took place, new challenges emerged. In this context of significant changes, the teaching-learning process had to evolve, and this included the assessment, as it constitutes an integral part of this process (QUEVEDO-CAMARGO; DAMACENA, 2021). In the context of language teaching, assessment necessitates a comprehensive approach, considering the entirety of students' expressions and outputs while also facilitating continuous monitoring of both student development and pedagogical practices. Consequently, our objective was to investigate how the adoption of principles from the pedagogy of multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996) could potentially address the new demands of language education. Furthermore, we aimed to comprehend the assessment perspectives of a specific group of educators and analyze their actions regarding assessment during and after the pandemic. Therefore, this research seeks to investigate, within the theoretical scope of Applied Linguistics (LA) and Education – considering that LA is an open area (MOITA LOPES, 2009) – how language teachers from a municipal network acted in relation to assessment during and after the pandemic, as well as to understand their conceptions of evaluation. The data generation instruments were: a) questionnaire; b) interviews; and c) materials produced by the participants, who are teachers from a municipal network in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre (RS) participating in a continuing education course. This research is characterized as qualitative, and the content analysis method (BARDIN, 2016; YIN, 2016) was employed for data analysis. The results show how the teachers have been redefining their perceptions of assessment during the continuing education course and how they evaluated, according to their reports, during and after the pandemic. Furthermore, it was inferred that during the pandemic, the teachers were unable to act as designers of their assessment practices due to the various difficulties encountered during that period and the lack of proper training. Consequently, it was also concluded that for pedagogical practices to be designed based on the pedagogy of multiliteracies, the teacher must act as a designer in language teaching.