CAN STUDENTS ASSESS? POSSIBILITIES OF A COUNTER-HEGEMONIC TURN AS A DECOLONIAL OPTION IN THE FIELD OF EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT IN BRAZIL

Abstract

The contemporary debate on educational assessment in Brazil has been shaped by the strong influence of hegemonic models centered on measurement, accountability, and control, producing practices that often silence students’ voices and reinforce historical hierarchies between teaching and learning. In this context, it becomes urgent to problematize the absence of students as active subjects in assessment processes, recognizing that such invisibility is anchored in a colonial tradition of knowledge that treats assessment as a disciplinary instrument rather than as a dialogical practice. Based on this tension, the objective of this article is to analyze the potential of student participation in assessment as a counter-hegemonic movement capable of challenging the prevailing technocratic rationality and opening decolonial possibilities within the educational field. Thus, the guiding question of the study is: to what extent can the inclusion of students as evaluative agents promote epistemological and political shifts that contribute to more democratic, dialogical, and decolonial assessment practices in Brazilian schools? Grounded in this problematization, the article examines theoretical foundations, emerging experiences, and possible effects of this reconfiguration, understanding assessment as a territory of dispute and collective construction of knowledge. Theoretically, we draw on the works of Angelo & Cross (1993), Apple (2001; 2019), Ball (2005; 2007; 2008), Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2002; 2006; 2013; 2014; 2019), Brookfield (2017), Darling-Hammond (2010), Dardot & Laval (2016), Fanon (2008; 2022), Freire (1979; 1992; 2014a; 2014b; 2014c; 2014d), Giroux (1997; 2011; 2022; 2024), Habermas (1972; 2003), Laclau (1990), McLaren (1994; 1997; 2000; 2005; 2014), Mignolo (2010; 2012a; 2012b), Quijano (2000; 2020), Santomé (2003), hooks (1994; 2003), Tuhiwai Smith (2007), Walsh (2013; 2019), Wiliam (2011), among others. The research adopts a qualitative approach (Minayo, 2007), with descriptive and bibliographic procedures (Gil, 2008) and a comprehensive analytical lens (Weber, 1949). The findings indicate that, at the theoretical-conceptual level, student participation reconfigures assessment by shifting it from a measurement-centered logic to a dialogical perspective that values the shared production of meaning. The analysis of the selected works shows that participatory practices operate as counter-hegemonic gestures capable of challenging the technocratic rationality and colonial devices that have historically shaped the field of assessment. Moreover, this movement enables the emergence of epistemologies of disobedience, expanding students’ intellectual autonomy and strengthening more horizontal pedagogical relationships. The theoretical frameworks examined converge in pointing out that the active participation of students destabilizes naturalized school hierarchies, creating space for more collaborative forms of knowledge construction. Thus, the study demonstrates that participatory assessment constitutes a promising decolonial horizon for the democratization of educational practices in Brazil.