2.1 Mapping the productions

In Table 1, the publications found referring to the theme of evaluation in the pandemic context are organized for further categorization and analysis.

It is noticeable that some articles are from 2020 because of how much time had passed from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and the need to research the subject. In 2021, there was a greater number of publications regarding learning assessment and its challenges during the pandemic.

3.1 The right to education and learning assessment

The article “The right to education in times of pandemic: challenges of emancipatory evaluation”, published in 2021, was qualitative research carried out in five Latin American countries: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. The participants were 512 students and 157 basic education educators. The objective was to understand the conceptions of evaluation and its practices to benefit education.

The right to education is understood as part of the set of Human Rights and their guarantees extended in the Post-Second World War. These are struggles that have been going on for a long time favoring everyone's right to the constituent knowledge of history and integral development. So, the evaluative practice must be at the service of this guarantee and right constituted worldwide, but the emancipatory evaluation doesn't always become praxis. Thus, it can be highlighted that:

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2021) has produced several reports with warnings about the need to guarantee the rights of children that are no longer met or are under greater threat with the suspension in-person school activities, with emphasis on the threat to the very right to education, which, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, could become an international crisis of children's rights. (^{EYNG et al., 2021}, p. 4).

Therefore, research carried out in 2021 during the pandemic in Latin American countries showed that gaps and inequalities in access to education have increased, as part of the population of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico does not have access to electronic devices nor to the internet. Thus, “school failure” is defined by the socioeconomic conditions presented. Thus, the following data can be highlighted:

In Argentina, 35.5% indicated that they have it and 61.3% do not. In Brazil, in the three states, 58.7% said yes and 40.2% said no. Among Chilean students, 84.6% have it and 15.4% do not. In Colombia, 84.6% yes and 15.4% no. Among Mexicans, 57.1% have it and 42.9% do not. Regarding access via cell phone, the data show that 74.2% of Brazilian and foreign students have their own cell phone and 20.3% use the cell phone of a family member when necessary. In turn, 5.5% of students in these countries indicated that they did not have a cell phone or had one without Internet access. (^{EYNG et al., 2021}, p. 15).

These data demonstrate that with connectivity there would be more opportunities to offer a quality assessment because teachers and students would be able to maintain bonds and, therefore, build learning together.

As for how evaluating was done, the research showed that most teachers used evaluation practices that are different from those used in fin-person teaching: such as games and research, but also questions and answers. There was a percentage of teacher who were unable to carry out any type of assessment due to lack of feedback from students. It is still stated that:

In general, the assessment activities mentioned express a pedagogical approach that is still quite conservative, and there is no evidence of reflective, interactive and self-regulated procedures for student learning in assessment. There are signs of fragility in the conceptions and precariousness of the activities, which can suggest a range of issues from unpreparedness to insecurity of the educators in the planning and development of the evaluative proposal in online classes. (^{EYNG et al., 2021}, p. 18).

The research also demonstrated that the teachers did not always have feedback from the students in the proposed activities due to the distancing. This further widened inequalities in the countries surveyed. This demonstrates that there is still a long way to go to guarantee the right to education in Brazil and in the other countries surveyed. It is known that Latin America is the most unequal continent on the planet.

It can be concluded that the right to education as a right for all ends up not being carried out, especially in Latin American countries, where the pandemic has widened differences and also made learning impossible, so: “Such results indicate the existence of a significant deficit to meet the demands arising from the suspension of in-person classes in 2020, when the guarantee of the right to education became dependant on digital resources” (^{EYNG et al., 2021}, p. 9).

The lack of access to technology in basic education is common in Latin American countries, where low-income students do not have technological equipment or access to the Internet, which has made their learning very difficult with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Likewise, in the article “Assessment of learning in the context of a pandemic: conceptions and teaching practices”, published in 2021, the authors question that the effort during the Covid-19 pandemic is at the heart of one of the most unequal societies in the world: in this case, the Brazilian. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reaffirm the right to education, understanding it as meeting the learning needs of students.

In this light, the research carried out was of the case study type, in which questionnaires were applied to 77 teachers working in private education. The point was to map a universe different from the Brazilian public school to problematize the right to education. Thus, the teachers in question worked at a school located in a developed city in Serra Gaúcha, where the socioeconomic profile of the students was upper middle class and everyone had access to technology.

According to the research, the teachers' conceptions of evaluation were diagnostic and procedural. For ^{Luckesi (2011)}, the concept of formative assessment is intrinsic to teaching and aims to promote student learning. Thus, the diagnosis is essential for the teacher to know the reality and development of students.

Regarding assessment strategies, that is, assessment practices, there were many changes by teachers during online classes, as well as:

Individual and group work; video analysis and production; exercise lists; elaboration of syntheses and mental maps; graphics creation; creation of digital maps; simulation of experiments; elaboration of challenge questions; creation of documentaries; developing flash cards; objective and discursive tests; debates; digital technological resources, both for synchronous and asynchronous moments. (^{RAMOS; SARMENTO; MENEGAT, 2021}, p. 12).

Soon, there was the use of several evaluation instruments by the teachers during remote emergency teaching involving digital means, but these professionals declared the insufficiency of such means because still “[...] the individualized work with each student is the best way of evaluating”, that is, in-person classes become essential for teacher mediation in basic education. Other difficulties to evaluate were reported:

The search for different ways to carry out the assessment: monitoring learning, identifying the skills that were developed or not; direct observation of student performance, due to physical distancing and also to the fact that not all students participate in virtual meetings; interaction at the time of assessment, helping to resolve possible doubts; the incipient participation of students in virtual meetings, making it difficult to consider this participation as one of the evaluative components. (^{RAMOS; SARMENTO; MENEGAT, 2021}, p. 13).

Remote teaching made it difficult for teachers to customize that work to the individual needs of each student would make possible. In addition to this difficulty, others were reported: such as the use of technologies by older teachers, who were not so skilled in the digital environment, and also an appropriate workplace.

According to ^{Villas Boas (2009}, p. 26), evaluative comments make it possible to involve students more in tasks, as they direct what still needs to be done, thus encouraging students: “It is important that students can seek their way of learning and demonstrate how they learn. It is not a lonely, harrowing and suffering, and uninteresting quest. Students need the constant presence of the teacher, as a guide and encourager”. In this sense, evaluative comments or so-called feedback became more difficult for teachers to reach their students in remote teaching with or without the use of digital technologies.

It was possible to conclude that, as well as in in-person teaching, during remote emergency teaching it was also possible for teachers to question and reflect on their evaluative practices. For ^{Tardif (2009)}, teaching knowledge is mobilized and transformed according to the needs of the workplace, the latter being a locus of teacher training and self-training. The self-assessment process at the school also contributes to the creation of an improvement plan for the institution, thus: “[...] it values the work carried out by the school's self-assessment team; contributes to the impact of self-assessment on planning, organization, and professional practices” (^{ALBUQUERQUE; FERREIRA; BARREIRA, 2022}, p. 7).

This research presents a huge difference between schools in Rio Grande do Sul. This serves as a basis for thinking about the right to education in other public schools where the scenario was the return of printed activities without any contact or teacher monitoring. It is understood that assessment is the gateway to the development of student learning and that the pandemic has widened inequalities in Latin American countries. Thus, the authors end the article by recalling the International Commission on the Futures of Education:

a) the strengthening of education as a common good; b) connectivity, access to knowledge, and information as fundamental to the effectiveness of the right to education; c) teacher appreciation; d) the defense of the rights of children and adolescents and the protagonism of students; e) the constitution of diversified spaces for teaching and learning; f) the availability of free and open-source technologies for teachers and students; g) the presence of scientific knowledge in study plans; h) the protection of investments and financing in public education, at the national and international levels; and i) the promotion of global solidarity to resolve social inequalities. (^{RAMOS; SARMENTO; MENEGAT, 2021}, p. 19).

Finally, an evaluation for emancipation needs to be formative and in favor of the construction of learning. If digital inclusion was not achieved in Latin American countries, the right to education and acquired knowledge will not be achieved either, as today digital assistance and technological equipment are needed for the democratization of quality education and as a right for all.

3.2 Evaluative perceptions and practices

The article “Educational evaluation in technological graduations: challenges during the pandemic”, published in 2021, shows qualitative and quantitative research in which professors of technological graduations were questioned. The research problem was: “What is the perception of professionals working in technological graduations (professional higher education) about the evaluation methods used before and during the period of social distancing caused by the Covid-19 pandemic?”.

With the compulsory adaptation of teachers to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), it was necessary to take another look at the evaluation processes, thus:

The legislation also expanded the possibility of using social networking tools, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and other media instances as a stimulus to studies and projects, accelerating the so-called 'digital transition', even though it is noticeable the existence of educational establishments whose environment most common method of teaching employs in-person resources. (^{BARRICHELLO et al., 2021}, p. 6).

Through questionnaires, the results show that institutions have changed their way of teaching to remote, for example:

In professional higher education institutions, metrics comprise not only theory but also the ability to perform practical tasks, as well as the development of problem-solving skills related to the practical dimensions of learning, related to the labor market. During the pandemic, educational teams from professional higher education institutions had to re-examine the learning objectives to adapt them to the student's reality. It becomes necessary to highlight digital technologies as auxiliaries to minimize the distance between practice and theory. (^{BARRICHELLO et al., 2021}, p. 6).

The use of texts, chats to answer questions, and videos available on the internet, among others, were modifications made in remote teaching of professional higher education. There was still a change in assessment with a focus on “What to assess?”, leading teachers to reflect on what would be essential to learn at that time.

The authors' investigation emphasized that the main difference in assessment practices, involving a change in meaning, corresponded to directing their focus to distinguish and value what could be called 'relevant learning'. From this perspective, which may involve different assessment strategies, professors resorted to practices that would enable students to show mastery of significant learning more than the ability to reproduce content. (^{BARRICHELLO et al., 2021}, p. 8).

Therefore, the research data also show that during the pandemic the evaluation process and the records kept by the professors were not disregarded, but that they privileged what would be more meaningful and important to learn for the professional training of students. Other changes in assessment practices were also signaled by professors: “Written assignments, individual or group, were requested instead of applying written tests - a usual alternative in the context of in-person teaching at universities” (^{BARRICHELLO et al., 2021}, p. 8).

The reduction in the use of essay tests by professors and other evaluation instruments demonstrates the clear adaptation and reinvention of teaching practice in the pandemic context. According to ^{Alarcão (2005}, p. 176), teachers are reflective professionals, thus contributing to the thinking that teachers:

[...] reflect on and about the interaction between the teacher and the student, between the school institution and society in general. This way, they have an active role in education and not a merely technical role that is reduced to the execution of norms and recipes or the application of theories outside their professional community.

This quote from ^{Alarcão (2005)} demonstrates that teaching is made up of reflective processes in the profession and about the profession; thinking in the pandemic context, such emergency modification caused a significant change through the continuous reflection of the practice. Therefore, there has been an increase in the number of seminars, research papers, lists of exercises, and questionnaires via Google Forms. From this perspective, the data show that:

Tests mixing 'dissertation and multi-school questions', 'assignments', and 'lists of exercises' practically did not show marked changes between the two periods considered. 'Seminars' suffered a relatively significant drop (from 44.7% to 33.5%), which is not justified, since, even at distance, students can use digital tools for the practice in question. The use of questionnaires registered a marked increase (from 22.3% to 39.9%), which leads to the inference that a portion of essay tests was replaced by this modality. This situation does not mean, however, that migrating from one type of assessment to another implies carrying the same weight in the composition of the student's final assessment. (^{BARRICHELLO et al., 2021}, p. 18).

It can be concluded that the pandemic and distance teaching encouraged teachers in other ways of approaching the evaluation of learning continuously and procedurally.

According to ^{Villas Boas (2009)}, the formative and individualized evaluation of the student is an ally of both the student and the teacher, in which digital technologies collaborate, as they enable more personalized work. The author reiterates that:

The improvement of the student's work is achieved if the teacher offers them guidance and they follow it. But this does not mean that the student is dependent on the teacher's guidance, but then Sadler says that students have skills to self-evaluate their work. The transition from teacher feedback to student self-monitoring does not happen automatically. Self-assessing your work is also a lesson to be acquired. (^{VILLAS BOAS, 2009}, p. 42).

Finally, digital technologies make it possible to personalize teaching and feedback in the assessment, as data collection through them helps this process. However, the research showed that there was a theoretical and practical lack of preparation on the part of teachers to work with digital technologies:

[...] in cases where there was purely and simply the suspension of classes, the cause appears to refer to limitations of students and professors regarding Internet access, hardware availability, or knowledge in the use of existing virtual platforms (Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.). (^{BARRICHELLO et al., 2021}, p. 14).

However, regarding digital technology and evaluation, ^{Gonçalves, Nunes and Souza (2021}, p. 205) point out that:

It makes no sense to simply introduce digital technologies into the assessment process, as simply inserting them will not automatically make education more interactive and modern, enjoyable, or bring more positive results in the assessment. Likewise, it is not only through them that the student will learn more. Using technologies has to do with the conceptions of the world and goes through the epistemological conceptions of teaching that we have.

This citation helps to think that the unintentional use of digital technologies in teaching is also of no use for learning. What is needed is teaching with strategies, so that digital technologies influence meaningful learning.

The research “School evaluation before and during the pandemic: how students see this moment”, published in 2021, was qualitative and quantitative and focused on how students perceived the evaluations applied in school life and the emergency remote teaching. The chosen public were 14 high school students from a public high school in Minas Gerais between 16 and 18 years old. The points highlighted in the research were:

i) understand how students see the evaluation processes; ii) to know if the moment of the evaluation is fair or makes them uncomfortable; iii) know which types of assessment were performed more frequently by students during their school life; iv) if the results they receive from their teachers interfere with their studies; and v) knowing how remote classes interfered in the students' daily lives, the relationship with the family and the challenges. (^{NEIVA; MELO, 2021}, p. 5).

Regarding the evaluation, “[...] 85.7% of the students pointed out the diagnostic evaluation as an effective modality in teaching, 71.4% pointed out the effective summative evaluation and 42.9% pointed out the formative evaluation as effective method” (^{NEIVA; MELO, 2021}, p. 10).

Regarding school life before the pandemic, “It was found that 57% of students did more diagnostic assessments in their school life, 29% of students said they took objective and discursive tests, and 7% of students indicated summative assessment and formative assessment” (^{NEIVA; MELO, 2021}, p. 10).

During the pandemic period, the students indicated that domestic activities hindered the execution of school activities and the parents helped very little in their realization. The researchers reiterate that:

Another factor raised in the research was the need for students to have more contact with the teacher in synchronous or recorded classes. At the school where the research was carried out, the activities happened as follows: the school used the Conecta Escola platform, which was connected to the Google Classroom platform, and the activities to be developed were provided by the Government of Minas Gerais, through the State Department of Education. All activities are asynchronous, only a few classes were held simultaneously. (^{NEIVA; MELO, 2021}, p. 12).

This feeling of students concerning the lack of in-person monitoring by teachers dialogues with the thinking of ^{Luckesi (2011)}, for whom the act of evaluating, when at the service of development, implies welcoming and monitoring. Even if reality is unsatisfactory, welcoming is the starting point for the loving act of evaluation. ^{Villas Boas (2009}, p. 29) also addresses the issue:

Valuing work is closely linked to evaluation. Every reference the teacher makes to the students' productions, orally or in writing, is part of the evaluation process. [...] But valuing does not mean praising excessively or omitting necessary comments: on the contrary, it means clearly and accurately pointing out the strengths and those that still deserve attention.

That is, the student who misses the teacher's monitoring during the remote period is indicative of a lack of feedback and support with their challenges and learning, as the data show that: "For 92.9% of students, the teacher's presence makes a difference to their school education. And, consequently, when asked whether the form adopted by the school could be different, 57.1% said yes” (^{NEIVA; MELO, 2021}, p. 13).

On the other hand, ^{Both (2012)} questions whether the fact that students essentially feel the need for feedback from teachers in the evaluation process is that they do not recognize themselves as active participants in their learning, a consequence of centuries of traditional and passive teaching in Brazilian schools.

However, when we talk about integral education, the socio-emotional aspects are considered as much as the cognitive ones. Thus, when there are affective bonds between teacher and student, learning mediations are more significant and assessment becomes emancipatory.

The data from this research also demonstrate that educational services should be universalized for the challenges of secondary education in Brazilian public education, in which the teacher does not assume a passive posture in the student's daily life, but that of a guide for a better future.

3.3 Active methodologies and evaluative practices in the pandemic period

In the article “Teaching, learning and assessment in the context of a pandemic: perceptions of trainers of future teachers”, published in 2020, the perceptions of professors who used online platforms for teaching and assessment of graduating students, using questionnaires, were investigated.

With the transmissibility of the Covid-19 virus, the university and the school moved from in-person teaching to remote teaching, in which digital technologies such as ICTs were used to develop classes. Platforms such as Zoom, Moodle, and Classroom were necessary for interaction between students and professors, and with their use the need to study active methodologies in education arose.

The contributions of active methodologies along with technology in education appear to “[...] reconfigure the pedagogical practice and give plasticity to the curriculum” (^{BACICH; MORAN, 2018}, p. 11), however, professors were still not used to technologies in their teaching process, which also made them uncomfortable with assessment practices. In higher education, for example, where there is a professional training, these active methodologies are important for the development of student autonomy, as well as knowledge of ICTs.

The research demonstrated, through questionnaires applied to three professors of undergraduate students, that teaching in the pandemic context mobilized the use of digital platforms that made synchronous and asynchronous classes possible. Synchronous classes are those developed in real-time with the professor and the students via the internet, and asynchronous classes are recorded classes that can be watched at any time and do not need to be in real-time. The contribution of ICT facilitates the study at alternative times, motivates students to research, and facilitates the organization of their study schedule.

Regarding the evaluation of learning, professors reported the need for it as something continuous and formative, in which the student is the center of his learning. The research showed that most professors changed the way they evaluated during the remote teaching, qualitatively different from the way they evaluated in in-person teaching.

Another differentiated way of evaluating was proposing research activities for the students. Some professors also declared that the execution of “tests” continued to be important an evaluation even in remote teaching. There was discomfort, however, for some professors, who pointed out that distance teaching makes it difficult to apply tests, due to internet access and the student having more possibilities to “cheat” or “fraud” the answers in the online tests.

For ^{Luckesi (2011)}, in Brazil, evaluation, when considered as a synonym of measurements and examinations, is a legacy of the 16th century, with the arrival of the Jesuits in the Portuguese colony. In traditional Jesuit pedagogy, priority was given to memorization, in which the teacher was the holder of knowledge and the passive student was the repository of knowledge. These cases in which professors, even in online teaching, fear that their students will cheat on their answers using the Internet, is a still perceptible legacy of evaluation seen as measurement and control of students.

On the other hand, the research data showed that professors perceive that evaluative feedback is easier due to the ease of monitoring that digital platforms make possible for students and professors, since “[...] evaluation methods, whether analog or digital, need to be seen as part of the subjects' development to provide a good experience for their subjects” (^{DIAS, 2021}, p. 117).

Finally, this research, carried out at the beginning of the pandemic, in 2020, demonstrated some emergencies in remote teachings, such as knowledge of ICTs and the study of active methodologies, and also how the evaluation was being rethought by part of the teachers questioned, to better student learning. As seen in the data, there was at times a lack of consensus on online tests as a way to evaluate remote teaching. These disagreements signaled in the data show the adaptation of teachers in the initial moment of the pandemic, including the other skills needed with the use of ICTs.

Considering the evaluation process as intrinsic to planning (^{LUCKESI, 2011}), digital technologies help in personalizing teaching, in which it better approaches the needs and difficulties of learners in a personalized way, but these practices are not common to teaching or evaluation, that is why the pandemic accelerated the use of ICTs.

^{Both (2012}, p. 72), however, points out that “It should be said, in advance, that it is not the use of advanced technologies that necessarily determines excellent results for one or another form of teaching, but the adequate use of this technology according to the characteristics of each modality.

The article “Formative evaluation: strategy in remote teaching in the Covid-19 pandemic”, published in 2022, brought an experience report and evaluation strategies at the Instituto Federal do Amazonas, Manaus campus, during emergency remote teaching in the course Introduction to Control and Automation Engineering, part of the curriculum of the Engenharia de Controle e Automação.

The professor reported that he had based his teaching on active methodologies, more specifically on the project methodology, in which the formative assessment took place through partial assessments and final assessments. The partial assessment took place during classes via Google Meet, in which students presented the evolution of their projects and their learning concerning the topic. The final evaluation also took place via Google Meet, when the final presentations of the projects took place to professors, colleagues and the community. Therefore, formative assessment, in this case of teaching, was a strategy to monitor learning during online only contact.

Unlike passive teaching, according to ^{Bacich and Moran (2018)}, active methodologies are an opportunity to make the student the center of their learning process, in which procedural and formative assessment facilitates this monitoring. The experience reported by the professor on how his formative assessment took place can serve as an example for other teaching modalities, such as distance education or hybrid teaching, which mixes in-person and online learning.