Educating nurses: promoting learning through evaluation
A group of Portuguese researchers is developing a study that aims the optimization of the evaluation processes in clinical education in the initial training of Nurses. The nursing schools intend to form reflective nurses, with technical, scientific and relation abilities, capable to answer to the necessities of the individuals and communities, in a perspective of human development. However, supported in some national and international studies, we conclude that the evaluation that has been carried out is not related to a learning method that appeals to processes co-produced with the public-target, where the participation, the co-reflection and the re-equation of the resources guides the intervention leading the individuals (in this case the students) to perform simultaneously different functions: as objects, subjects and actors. Thus, our challenge is to develop an including, adjusted and functional alternative, capable to answer to the requirements that such a process of learning imposes. As The 35th International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA) Annual Conference, our proposal intends to be audacious, innovative and creative, so that the evaluation in clinical education can be better prepared to give answers to a constantly changing world. So, we defend an evaluation process that is centred in learning and capable to value both processes and products. A balanced and structured evaluation process that values all participants and conceives different processes from several points of view. An evaluation process regarding to pertinent, open and explicit criteria, allowing all actors to identify the aspects to learn and those learned. Evaluation for learning must ground in qualitative standards, assuming subjectivity as cause and consequence of the taked options. The final classification, quantitative for legal imposition, must be the transposition of the related qualitative principles.
