Abstract

Training teachers as evaluators is a challenging task, as evaluation is a polysemous construct linked to power relations and school culture. It becomes an interesting study object as a specific learning during Initial Teaching Training, particularly when school communities expect to overcome the technical-instrumental approach. This qualitative study inquiry into the evaluation task as object of representation by primary education teachers, an educational level with a high number of enrolled students, with the objective of characterizing the social representations on the evaluation of the teaching staff in training. Based on the assumption that social representations are built at different moments during the training route, a cross-sectional study design was implemented involving 18 students undergoing initial teaching training and 13 recently graduated students from two regional universities that are members of the Chilean Council of University Presidents. The collection of data was based on focused interviews conducted from April to October 2019. The content analysis was carried out in five stages and data were organized in a consolidated sheet of emerging theoretical codes. The findings show dynamic representations about the evaluation task and the school evaluation system, as a result of social and professional self-learning at educational institutions. These results suggest that various actors from school communities have an influence on teachers' development of literacy in the area of educational evaluation.