Introduction

Assessment processes in educational institutions are currently facing new challenges associated with comprehensive training, learning development and teaching subjects who will contribute to their societies. This diverse and dynamic socio-educational context faces the need to adapt its evaluative rationale to strengthen teaching-learning practices that are co-constructed between students and teachers, in order to include varied procedures and protocols that consider the comprehensive training of the students (^{RÍOS; HERRERA, 2017}; ^{RÍOS, 2007}; ^{AHUMADA, 2001}).

In this context, comprehensive training in the areas of education must face the demands of societies that demand higher levels of equality and inclusion, and degrees of participation and restructuring of democratic institutions. Faced with this situation, learning assessment assumes a central role in the construction of subjects committed to social progress (^{BOLÍVAR, 2013}). This means that the technical perspective based on qualification needs to be counterbalanced to move toward authentic and progressive assessment practices, such as being able to contribute to forming students that are aware of themselves, their learning and their own actions in the social world (^{STOBART, 2010}).

The construction of a democratic evaluative practice is explained by two reasons. First, the development of learning theories which, from a sociocultural perspective, have pointed out that learning is an active process, associated with the subject’s development in social interaction, and is therefore a progressive construction of meaning on what is learned. Thus, developing metacognition and self-regulation are fundamental and crucial to achieve these goals. Second, the democratization of the education system based on mass and diverse schooling processes, not only student integration regardless of their social origin, but also the transformation of the school into a social space to develop meaningful school experiences aimed toward democratic coexistence.

For these reasons, the relevance of social function of assessment has to increase. This idea positions the work in the area of learning for life, especially in the processes of social interaction with the purpose of comprehensive development of the subjects in their social-cognitive and affective dimensions. In this regard, the social function of assessment not only situates the comprehensive learning of the subjects. It also imposes a new challenge: incorporating active students that are conscientious of their training.

To take on such a challenge, decentralizing assessment enables redefining the role and the meanings of the evaluative practice. In fact, it assumes a dialogic perspective driven toward reflection, criticism and self-criticism among teachers and students, with the aim of making progress toward higher levels of self-regulation in learning. For this reason, the assessment action is a shared space of dialog that involves varied assessment processes related to the diversity of learning that is present in the classroom Thus, it is important to problematize the conventional conceptions about the evaluative practice in teaching that range from normative and technical foundations, relegating the processes of social diversity and neutralizing the conflicts of cultural distribution in the school as a phenomenon that is alien to assessment (^{HOUSE; KENNETH, 2001}; ^{POPHAM, 2013}).

We conceive decentralizing assessment as a democratizing pedagogical strategy aimed at redefining roles between teachers and students. Its axis is to promote participation, collaboration and co-construction of the evaluative processes and a space for negotiating meanings among educational actors. Therefore, it is focused on the dialogic interaction, discussion and critical reflection as mechanisms that enable forming subjects committed to the development of society.

In short, we need to incorporate students in evaluative dynamics based on principles of ethics and valued that contribute to an experience of conscious, responsible and inclusive social formation (^{MORÁN, 2012}). The purpose of this is to foster critical student engagement in learning processes and how they interact with social reality. The challenge for assessment of the twenty-first century is to move forward in restructuring the logic of power embedded in the spaces of evaluative action, in order to contribute to democratic education and citizenship (^{POPHAM, 2013}).

In order to install evaluation practices with these principles, it is essential to promote shared, comprehensive and ethical approach to assessment, based on the construction of learning (^{AHUMADA, 2005}; ^{ÁLVAREZ, 2008}; CARLESS, 206; ^{TORANZOS, 2014}; ^{LÓPEZ-PASTOR; PÉREZ-PUEYO, 2017}). This means incorporating shared reflection and evaluation among teachers and students on the construction of their own cognitive processes. Therefore, the aim of these higher levels of understanding is to create space to negotiate meanings, based on the exchange of conceptions, perceptions and valuations sparking from the personal and interpersonal formative process (^{RÍOS, 2007}).

To advance in this perspective, it is necessary to incorporate students as evaluation agents, in processes or modalities of self-assessment, co-evaluation and peer assessment. Within the framework of authentic assessment, these procedures enable not only to decentralize assessment as a normative-bureaucratic act, but also promoting the creation of democratic educational spaces, encouraging critical reflection and self-criticism as means to build capacities and attitudes in the actions of participation and co-responsibility of the actors in education (^{MORÁN, 2012}; ^{LÓPEZ-PASTOR; PÉREZ-PUEYO, 2017}; ^{VALLEJO; MOLINA, 2014}).

The methodology followed in this paper considers a review of the literature, with its central focus on decentralizing assessment as a process that favors the participation of students in contexts of authentic assessment, overcoming the paradigm of the technical assessment rationale. It additionally considers the situations of power involved in its practice by the teacher and his or her contribution to ensure better learning by students in space of reflexive and dialogical co-construction between both educational agents - students and teachers.

Considering the above, this article is organized into three sections: the first poses a brief theoretical-conceptual discussion on decentralizing assessment focused on training processes. The second section addresses the characteristics of authentic assessment as a perspective to contribute to construing assessment decentralization as a pedagogical space to interact with complex knowledge among teachers and students. In the third section, the final reflections address the challenges imposed by assessment decentralization to construct evaluation practices based on formative, procedural, comprehensive and reflexive principles.

Decentralizing assessment: theoretical foundations to strengthen training processes in the classroom

Participatory action between students and teachers in the practice of assessment can be explained by the principle of cooperation in evaluation. Understood as a socio-affective and cognitive action, which not only favors the construction process of self-regulation of learning, but also facilitates the consolidation of subjects’ evaluative processes that transcend the classroom (^{RÍOS, 2007}). These spaces of interpersonal cooperation are enhanced by decentralized assessment practices based on a dialectical relationship that restructures pedagogical orientations that arise from interaction and co-construction of the agents involved. Integrating these actions calls on the mediating role of the teacher for feedback to articulate the dialogic interactions, in order to generate a new meaning and significance of the assessment (^{BOLÍVAR, 2010}; COLL; MAURÍ; ROCHERA, 2012; ^{DÍAZ-BARRIGA; BARROSO, 2014}).

In this framework, the role of self-assessment to achieve these objectives is essential. Defined as the critical action and self-criticism of subjects in valuing their learning achievements and cognitive processes, self-assessment consolidates the transversal character of education and enhances conscious formation of subjects on their actions and responsibilities (^{CASTILLO; CABRERIZO, 2003}; 2010; ^{RÍOS; TRONCOSO, 2003}).

Here we propose a self-assessment that goes beyond the traditional perspective of self-qualifying the action of valuing student performance. It is about establishing a logic that effectively manages to decentralize the evaluative act to consolidate shared and participatory practices. For this to happen, the technical evaluative rationale needs to be replaced for a holistic one that focuses on the construction of a formative evaluative culture.

For example López Pastor and Perez Pueyo (2017), shared assessment is the answer to integrate the students in the assessment process as a systematic formative action to redesign the logics of subject participation in the classroom. In this regard, the change resulting from shared assessment practices not only improves learning, but it also contributes to collective reflection and, above all, to self-criticism of performance as assessment environments that focus on self-learning. In effect, this perspective enhances transversality in the education path based on democratic formation to accept the integration of difference, controversy and peaceful conflict resolution in school and social spaces.

One possibility for evaluative transformation is present in comprehensive or shared approaches that propose developing critical reflection through activities, performances, tasks and actions that are organized based on authentic problematization in order to insert self-assessment as an evaluation device that is integrated into the construction of learning (^{LÓPEZ-PASTOR, 2012}). This position requires an act of self-appreciation as a way of facing assessment challenges that arise in the teaching practice, which depend on the interaction between teaching and learning methods (^{CANO, 2008}; ^{RÍOS, 2007}).

Additionally, it is possible to the action of self-assessment using co-evaluation and peer evaluation modalities. Co-evaluation is an interpersonal - teacher and student or between students - action to build shared meanings, to value one’s own actions and the relevance of the process and achievement based on the interaction with the teacher or among students themselves. On the other hand, peer assessment is the valuation of one subject carried out by another one, as peers or equivalents. It considers the action, performance, commitment, achievement, among other elements, which are registered in an authentic assessment procedure and are focused on a critical perspective of the work among students. Both procedures contribute in the formation of autonomy, solidarity and diversity, under collaborative principles, with constructive and responsible value judgments. As a result, they strengthen effective, comprehensive and reflexive communication practices around assessment (^{MORÁN, 2012}).

Not only do these assessment modalities allow these agents to give an account of the democratization of teaching practices, but they also show positive impacts on learning outcomes, student self-esteem and self-regulation of learning (^{FÖSTER, 2018}; ^{PANADERO; BROWN, 2017}; ^{SPILLER, 2012}). The latter is crucial for the evolution of subjects that are conscious and reflective about their work. In fact, self-regulation of learning as the process of proactive orientation of students to guide, build and transform their own learning, contributes to their personal autonomy. In turn, it incorporates self-reflection as a strategy of personal transformation that is fundamental to achieve decentralized evaluative practices (^{SCHUNK; ZIMMERMAN, 2011}).

In summary, these evaluative procedures present characteristics and possibilities for promoting greater student participation, a presented in Table 1.

This approach presents a diversity of interpretations based on the implementation of actions linked to decentralizing assessment. According to López Pastor and Pérez Pueyo (2017), there are shared elements in the literature on co-evaluation and peer assessment that are part of the shared-assessment, co-assessment or collaborative assessment approaches, in order to reorganize assessment practices to contribute to the critique and self-criticism of socio-educational processes facing the current system (^{ALVAREZ, 2008}; GALLARDO-FUENTES; LÓPEZ-PASTOR; CARTER, 2017; ^{IBARRA; RODRIGUEZ, 2014}).

To consolidate these practices, ^{Ríos (2007)} proposed transforming the evaluative rationale related to the teaching-school routine and thus, to advance in conceptions, perceptions and behaviors of students and teachers on the valuation of the teaching process. According to the author, these school routines have hindered the development of collective and reflexive processes to consolidate meaningful evaluation spaces aimed toward the integrality of the agents involved. In short, this perspective seeks, on the one hand, to establish a change in teaching practices and, on the other hand, to progress in building participatory evaluation spaces for students, with the purpose of reformulating the power logics of assessment. The aim is to democratize acts of evaluation based on principles of collaboration and participation, redefining the pedagogical act in its combined teaching-learning logics, from a culture of assessment to position the social function of the field of evaluation (^{CATALAYUD, 2008}; ^{DELGADO; CUELLO, 2009}; ^{ROMÁN, 2011}). This, however, does not mean replacing the roles and functions that are inherent to formal education as a space for the construction and formation of comprehensive learning. Rather, it fosters the development of evaluation that incorporates a mediating device for authentic, meaningful and cross-cutting learning, to form conscious subjects.

Replacing traditional assessment methods points to the need to redirect cognitive and evaluative constructs with regard to their technical rationality. This implies not only executing self-assessment, co-assessment and peer assessment agents, but also positioning the interaction between subjects as a social-educational production process (^{AHUMADA, 2005}; ^{ÁLVAREZ, 2008}; ^{CARRIÓN, 2005}; RODRÍGUEZ, HERNÁNDEZ, 2014).

In order to implement assessment practice, it is important to consider at least the following foundations:

Considering these approaches, change in assessment practice for the active involvement of students in analyzing and assessing their learning. These, according to the principles of authentic and shared assessment should be considered in dialogs that allow for the exchange of ideas, beliefs and perceptions, delimited by expected practices to achieve performances. Thus, jointly creating goals and objectives is crucial to establish commitment in achieving learning (^{DÍAZ-BARRIGA; BARROSO, 2014}; ^{RAVELA, 2015}). This not only favors learning from and with others, but it also contributes to developing life skills and, above all, to learning to live together as guiding socio-educational pillars in the formation of students.

This evaluative path depends on a dialectical dialog that arises from the interaction between teachers and students. Both educational agents become subjects who perform evaluations of themselves and of those around them, establishing a dynamic flow of education that builds on inter-subjectivity as a corner stone, leading to dialogic and contextualized reflection that is open to change in assessment practices (^{RÍOS, 2007}).

In this sense, from a critical perspective, assessment proposes consolidating a personal and collective dimension in constructing the valuation of the educational process. In words of ^{Santos Guerra (2003}; 1995), it is to strengthen habits of deep reflexive meaning on one’s own reality. To achieve this, it is necessary to implement logics to transposition evaluative power, that is, to alter the classic relations of power in the classroom, assigning an increasingly prominent role to the production of the various meanings and valuations that operate in the educational process. In this way, students become agents that are responsible for their evaluative actions and are able to enrich the development of teaching and learning from the logics of community, dialog and democracy in their formative action (^{CASANOVA, 1997}; ^{IBABE; JAUREGUIZAR, 2007}; ^{LUCKESI, 2005}; ^{SANTOS GUERRA, 1995}).

In short, it is to make evaluation visible in its political context and the power of the evaluator to consolidate a practice driven towards evaluative justice based on shared values such as equality, moral autonomy, fairness and reciprocity (^{STOBART, 2010}). In addition to proposing the construction of an alternate assessment that assume the democratic practice of the question of evaluation, this perspective also needs to take hold of the inter-subjectivities and meanings that emerge from the process of valuing educational performance that become the ethos of decentralizing assessment (^{FERNANDES, 2009}; ^{HOUSE, 2000}; ^{STOBART, 2010}; ^{STAKE, 2006}).

Authentic assessment promoting evaluative decentralization

Considering the authors’ perspectives and the challenges involved in implementing evaluative decentralization, it is argued that the authentic assessment approach favors the construction of a participatory evaluative rationale that promotes learning (^{BLACK; WILLIAM, 1998}; ^{MORENO-OLIVOS, 2016}).

As argued by Herman, Aschbacher and Winters (1992), this type of evaluation is characterized by the integration of prior knowledge, contextualized learning and problem-solving skills. Thus, the strength of this evaluative conception is to insert self-assessment, co-assessment and peer assessment as an opportunity for students to take responsibility of their learning processes (^{VALLEJO; MOLINA, 2014}). Of its potential to advance in this direction, we highlight:

a) Authentic assessments are designed to establish actions and/or practices that enable students to face contextualized and projected educational situations from and for reality. Each task or activity is related to a particular area as a way of assessing contextualized learning. For example, lab activities, project development, construction of discourse for audiences, among others. In short, these types of tasks become cognitive, procedural and attitudinal challenges that are essential to develop higher-order and problem-solving skills to evidence the progress of learning. They also contribute to consolidating practices of decentralizing assessment because they enable students and teachers to face concrete educational contexts associated to the exchange and construction of lifelong learning, and thus, generate space to integrate learning styles and interests in the same evaluation procedure.

b)The criteria of authentic assessment are not focused on rigid standards that depend on a concrete answer. They are enriched by the complexity of the task, so these criteria may be established as a subjective, formative and comprehensive action by the educational agents themselves. To this end, it is essential to discuss, analyze and make the dimensions, indicators and/or descriptors of the evaluation tools transparent among the participating actors. This definitions not only responds to a policy of democratic validity and reliability, but also consolidates the legitimacy of the evaluative process through actions that promote achieving learning objectives in a way that is fair and integrated. (^{FERNANDES, 2009}; ^{LUCKESI, 2013}).

c) This approach to authentic assessment becomes a facilitator for the implementation of self-assessment, co-assessment and peer assessment. It not only encourages students’ critical and self-critical reflection, but also consolidates practices related to learning progress through a redesign of a formative-qualitative evaluation practice of learning (^{HARLEN; JAMES, 1997}; ^{SHEPARD, 2006}). In fact, it extends the logics of decentralizing assessment when students are able to establish dialectic interactions on learning and can involve themselves in the assessment of others as well as their own achieved performance.

These criteria of authentic assessment contribute to consolidating assessment practices and strategies related to redesigning the school assessment culture, as a need to promote contextualized, situated and focused actions on learning (^{HOUNSEL, 2011}). Evaluative integration from this perspective promotes a different development of agents and instruments that are empowered by permanent reflection. This enables delving deeper into the feedback processes as a formative strategy and, above all, through the construction of self-regulation of learning as the basis of evaluative decentralization.

The development of participatory and authentic evaluation processes offers and interesting advantage for the development of students’ capacities for self-criticism and criticism, as well as for strengthening attitudes in the affective-emotional sphere (knowing how to be) that constitute substantial ethical and moral characteristics in the formation of the subject. At the same time, it enables consolidating an evaluation process associated to the change of the social context and, thus, to face new demands of the education system, of being able to promote values of democracy, participation and commitment to contribute to conflict resolution in a peaceful way. (^{ESCUDERO, 2016}; FETTERMAN; KAFTARIAN; WANDERSMAN, 2015). These actions are meaningful when students are able to make value judgements about their own formative experiences (^{STOBART, 2010}). To organize this type of authentic evaluative processes, it is important to consider the following aspects:

These criteria depend on the pedagogical coherence, the use of active and participative methodologies focused on process-based assessment and oriented towards teacher feedback to incorporate errors as an opportunity to improve learning. The idea is to encourage permanent self-learning and provide teachers with solid tools that incorporate assessment strategies from and for feedback as means to contribute to the construction of subjects that are increasingly aware and capable of self-regulating their learning processes (^{CARLESS, 2016}; ^{YANG; CARLESS, 2013}).

In this sense, ^{Ríos (2007)} has pointed out that the usefulness of assessment for students and teachers in an inclusive and participatory teaching context is characterized by the factors presented in Table 2.

As seen in Table 2, the consolidation of assessment practices depends on the levels of awareness of teachers and students in becoming accountable for the progress of learning. In this sense, strategies such as feedback and the ability to construct inclusive evaluative spaces make it possible to incorporate subjectivities, the exchange of meaning and varied experiences on evaluation. This not only promotes the consolidation of authentic and deep learning, but also strengthens the assessment culture of the classroom, which assumes the assessed object as a constant interaction that is transformative in nature and, above all, as the incorporation of the underlying complexity in the pedagogical practice.

In this way, the main utility of assessment from an authentic, understanding and critical rationale, oriented towards participation and decentralized evaluation is the possibility of making subjects the protagonists of the educational dynamics, contributing to the comprehensive valuation of the learning process and, mainly, the impact of this focus for decision-making and the achievement of self-learning.

Conclusion: the challenge of decentralizing assessment

The need to advance in the construction of a new evaluative culture within educational institutions becomes a primary challenge to consolidate the progress of learning. In this regard, decentralizing assessment - from a comprehensive, shared and socio-constructive perspective - poses to redesign assessment practices of teachers and encourages, in the case of students, a new look at how to understand their own learning processes. The foundation is to advance in understanding the assessment process aimed at restructuring the logics of pedagogical power as the essential axis of educational mediation.

The challenge we have presented requires a review of pedagogical practices, with an emphasis on assessment, related to a paradigm shift for the opportunities offered by authentic assessment associated to how the evaluative procedures should be implemented in a comprehensive, democratic and consensual manner. This is a direct disruption of traditional practices of hetero-evaluation exercised by teacher in an atavistic manner. Therefore, it expresses an alteration in the mastery and control of the exchange of meanings and subjectivities when these procedures to value teaching-learning processes are applied. In effect, reformulating the logics of power and teaching in a socio-constructive sense and involving students in the assessment process involves building and replacing perspectives and rationales on the role of teachers and students in the development of learning linked to the challenges facing democratic societies of the twenty-first century.

One possibility to confront this perspective is to strengthen the processes of authentic, continuous and shared assessment in, from and for the activities, actions, tasks and practices related to the development of didactic strategies of learning that are situated, contextualized and, above all, challenging. As stated above, assessment should promote actions of critical reflection and self-criticism as possibilities to build democratic practices aimed at problem-solving in instances of transversal learning. Thus, active participation and co-construction of knowledge imply the systematic execution of evaluative procedures oriented towards new conceptions such as self-assessment, co-assessment and peer assessment.

These agents make it possible to create a new ethical and moral alternative about assessment, based on comprehensive learning and, above all, offering opportunities to hold subjects accountable for their achievements and aspects to improve. This redefining of the roles of assessment depends entirely on an approach capable of visualizing it as a space for negotiating meanings dependent on a cross-cutting, dialogical process in constant co-construction based on the exchange of subjectivities regarding the achievement of learning. In effect, it is in the subjective ad collective interaction that assessment emerges as an integrative space between educational theory and practice.

The potential of assessment as a space for integration and interaction of educational perceptions, conceptions and practices makes feedback a privileged strategy to strengthen this assessment dialectic that involves teachers and students. It is in the flow of this feedback that the development of complex cognitive skills is strengthened, related to critical reflection and self-criticism aimed towards self-regulation of learning to acquire abilities and skills that facilitate students’ development for life. This is precisely the turning point: feedback not only strengthens the assessment space as an act of negotiation of meanings on learning, but also makes it possible to consolidate dialogical and communicative practices of a qualitative, subjective and reflexive nature that strengthen the assessment act as an authentic formative space that contributes to the construction of empowered subjects who are committed to their roles in social development.

Considering this interpretive framework, decentralizing assessment constitutes an educational imperative that seeks to reformulate the sense, meaning and utility of assessment in the formation process of students. It seeks to promote discussion on how to improve the quality of education within institutions and, consequently, its impact on social transformation, based on autonomous decisions that students will make as they integrate into their future communities consciously and purposefully.