External evaluation of the educational process and learning evaluation in mathematics classes: Notes from an investigative practice

Abstract

Anchored in an evaluation perspective in the service of learning, this article brings a discussion of the relationship of external evaluation of the educational process and evaluation of learning in the classroom context from an analysis of written productions of students in dealing with routine issues of written math class exams and external evaluation questions. This is a qualitative research of an interpretative nature, in which, through an investigative practice in a 2nd grade high school class of a public school in which the students solved four questions about the study of sequences - Arithmetic Progression (A.P.). We sought to highlight the potential of using external evaluation questions to feed pedagogical actions that favor reflection on the curriculum developed in the classroom, and vice versa. In this research, it was possible to show that the difficulty of the students to understand the statement of the questions and the fact that they cannot relate the content to the daily practices can be aspects that influence the Brazilian students' performance in external mathematical evaluations; as can be presumed that students have shown poor performance in external tests not because they are unaware of mathematical knowledge, but because the type of problem to which they are exposed differ substantially from those of their classroom teaching and evaluative practices.