School evaluation: Illusion and prudence

Abstract

People's hope for a theory of evaluation that prescribes the means and conditions of correct evaluation. Epistemological treatment of evaluation shows that all standard conceptions entail destruction of the object of pedagogy and its transformation into the unreal and imaginary in its statements and the illusory in its prescriptions. The conclusion analyses and goes beyond the solution of a radical relativism, put forward in two recent papers. Tangentially, Spanish readers are presented with a panorama of the practices and the investigations with regard to evaluation in French speaking countries.