No. 6 (2024): ASSIGNING A VALUE. Evaluation between theory and practice

The concept of "value" traditionally straddles the realms of ethics and economics. The challenge of this issue of DYNAMIS is to use “value” as a bridge-notion between ethics and education, the latter understood in its most concrete practices, such as assessment. Every week, in every classroom in our countries, teachers assign a value to the performances of students. At mid-year and at the end of the year, students are evaluated through a verbal judgment or a numerical indicator. What actually is being evaluated? A performance, a quantitative acquisition of knowledge, or an index of personal growth? More fundamentally, what is the purpose of evaluation? What goal does a teacher pursue by evaluating their students, and what biases may be at play in this judgment process?

These and other questions we intend to pose to the authors of this issue of DYNAMIS, seeking first to provide an account of how the concept of “value” moves from philosophy to pedagogy, and then to understand how we can best transform it into concrete educational practices.