Diário reflexivo e avaliação formativa nas aulas de língua inglesa da educação básica: um estudo de caso

Abstract

This dissertation aimed to investigate how writing reflexive journals may be used as a formative assessment tool in classrooms. An average of four journals were written per student from two ninth grade English classes in a state public school in Uberlandia, MG in 2012. To guide the research, I established the following research questions: 1. How can the reflexive journal, written by the students, work as a formative assessment tool in English language classes?, 2. How teacher`s reflection may be affected by writing journals about their own teaching practice? I based my theoretical discussion on Galhardo (2009), Liberali, (1999) and Soares (2006), among others. As I had some interest in reflection in the educational environment, I discussed this theme based on Liberali (1999) and Zabalza (2004). To discuss formative assessment, I used authors such as Felice (2005) and Fidalgo (2002), among other researchers. This work is found within a methodological framework of qualitative research, with interpretive nature. Within this framework, this dissertation is a Case Study based on Stake (1995) and the data were organized into thematic categories based on Bardin (1977). The analyses revealed that the reflexive journal may work as a profitable formative assessment tool. I observed that the formative assessment is related to interaction, because when the student interacts with the educational context, he/she has more chances to reflect about himself/herself and also about what surrounds him/her. Regarding the analysis from the teacher s journals, I noticed that she reflected about her practices based on her relationship with the students and their journals contents. Therefore, the reflexive journal may positively contribute to the teacher\'s pedagogical practice because when she reads the students\' journals, she reflects about facts that she may not notice with other instruments.