Exploring the interactional practice of assessment: Students as competent contributors in evaluating their own competence

In this paper, I move beyond the dominating focus on assessment and evidence use in educational policy and its uptake in educational practice, to explore which aspects of competence students are made accountable for in authentic evaluations carried out by means of group subject talks. Methodologically, the study draws on audio-recorded materials collected through ethnographic fieldwork in four lower secondary schools. Analytically, the study focuses on a part of the data corpus capturing authentic teacher – student dialogues after group subject-talk tests. Using sociocultural perspective, and the notion of accountable talk, the study reports interaction analysis of the evaluation dialogues under scrutiny. The results illustrate that subject-talk evaluation practices through their organization in social groups, go beyond assessing students in terms of assessments criterions or scales. The assessment situation becomes a setting where teachers share professional judgments and approve specific initiatives on the part of the groups of students, positioning students as competent contributors in the evaluations of their own social and academic knowledge. Keywords: classroom assessment, student evaluation, accountable talk, group dialogues