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Spanish to English translations [PRO] Social Sciences - Education / Pedagogy / Diversity in schools / Special education
Spanish term or phrase:evaluación procesual
SPAIN. I think this may be what we used to call "continuous assessment", but I've been out of school for a long time and the terminology might have changed.
"La evaluación procesual es aquella que consiste en la valoración continua del aprendizaje del alumnado y de la enseñanza del profesor, mediante la obtención sistemática de datos, análisis de los mismos y toma de decisiones oportuna mientras tiene lugar el propio proceso."
Explanation: This is NOT continuous assessment, which is a form of assessment of learners/students by teachers, as opposed to final tests/exams. As the sample text you've posted shows, "evaluación procesual" is a method of evaluating the learning and teaching process itself. It's not a method of determinaing students' marks/grades for the course; its aim is to improve the "proceso didáctico".
"EVALUACIÓN PROCESUAL: proporciona la información necesaria para ir orientando y corrigiendo el proceso educativo. Proporcionará información permanente sobre el alumno y también sobre el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje (evaluación de la organización del aula, de la coordinación del profesorado…)." http://www.eumed.net/rev/ced/29/fbg.htm
The point is that it collects data during the process; it's ongoing, as opposed to a final evaluation at the end, of a retrospective kind.
These two kinds of assessment are called formative and summative in English (don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger). The terms and concepts were introduced by Michael Scriven in 1967: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formative_assessment
Evaluación procesual is another name for evaluación formativa. The following is from a Mexican master's dissertation on the subject:
"Tipos de evaluación [...] Para Castillo (2002), existen etapas en el proceso Enseñanza-Aprendizaje: antes, durante y después; por tal motivo, la tipología de la evaluación estará constituida por tres momentos, a saber: diagnóstica, formativa y sumativa. En cambio, Bonvecchio y Maggioni (2006) le asignan nombres diferentes a la formativa y sumativa, identificándolas como procesual y de resultados, respectivamente. [...] Formativa. Pertenece al durante. También conocida como evaluación procesual (Artiles, Mendoza y Yera, 2008), continua, de seguimiento, permanente o proactiva" (pp. 44–46). https://repositorio.itesm.mx/bitstream/handle/11285/571011/D...
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 4 hrs (2018-11-10 23:37:22 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
To be honest, "process evaluation" would express the meaning, but I would use the established term "formative assessment", because that way people who know about educational theory will get what you're talking about (or they can look it up).
I'm going to ask the author to clarify the term anyway, but maybe not for a few days now. After this weekend's storms, my electricity blew out and right now I only have one socket functioning in the whole house - no overhead lights, but I can run the router and PC enough to get some work done. I don't know how long it will take to find a decent electrician and get the repairs done...
As i mentioned below, "procesual" only appears once in the whole document, in a subsection on assessment: "Las dos experiencias que describen la evaluación explican la importancia de llevar a cabo una evaluación procesual ." So, there is nothing else in the document that specifies exactly what they mean. Initially I didn't want to post the actual sentence it appears in, to avoid requests for further context, which I really don't think would help.
I sympathise; it's a constant problem. Spanish is generally more tolerant of it than English, though English is more tolerant than people sometimes claim. But you often find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time looking for suitable synonyms.
I can't offer an opinion on that without seeing how they use "evaluación procesual"; I can only reiterate that in principle "continuous/ongoing assessment" is an expression applied in educational writing to evaluation of students, not of programmes or proposals, and depending on the exact context it could well be misleading if used to refer to the latter.
...with the original text is repetition/redundancy. For example, they seem to have a bee in their bonnet about "diversity", and bang on about it all the time, never using synonyms, for example "la diversidad de patrimonios y la diversidad de personas". Maybe such repetition is considered good style in Spanish, but it sets my teeth on edge when I have to translate it.
I think it just means ongoing/continuous assessment of the proposal they are recommending throughout the paper, once it is put into practice, i.e. using heritage as a means to work on emotions with "differently abled people".So yes, it's more or less the same meaning as in the sample (valoración continua del aprendizaje del alumnado y de la enseñanza).
But are you able to say whether the sample quote represents the sense of the term as it's used in your text? I hope so, because if not, we've been wasting our time.
...was just plucked at random from the Internet, because I didn't want to post great chunks of the article I'm translating, to avoid getting sidetracked into discussions about other issues. I've almost finished the first draft, but it will take a lot of tweaking afterwards, and there are a lot of formatting details to deal with as well. The discussion here has been interesting, which is one of the problems with this text, because every time I look up a term I end up getting engrossed in what I find and wasting a lot of time.
Thanks for that information. Like everyone else (I think), I've been working on the assumption that the way it's used in your text is essentially the same as in your sample quotation, but as you know, it's impossible to tell without seeing the actual context.
I'm translating is about patrimony/heritage, specifically about working on emotions with people with "different abilities" or special needs through heritage. "Procesual" Only appears once in the whole document, in a subsection on assessment: "Las dos experiencias que describen la evaluación explican la importancia de llevar a cabo una evaluación procesual .". So, I think "continuous assessment" will work in the context, whether they're talking about assessing/grading the students or assessing the teachers/methods/resources/approach... or not.
No problem with your views on assessment, Marcelo! It's just a question of terminology. Using "continuous/ongoing assessment" to refer to this goes right against all my own experience in education, and is contradicted (I think) by the prevailing trend of online usage.
I repeat, any good teacher will draw conclusions from their students' performance, as revealed by assessed course assignments and class contributions, as well as tests, and apply them to improve teaching and learning, but that's a different matter. I'm afraid there are also plenty of teachers who conduct continuous assessment, because it's required of them and if they persistently fail to grade their students they'll lose their jobs, but don't really learn from it or think about its implications for how they teach. In those cases, formative assessment (or evaluación procesual), in the sense established by Scriven, Bloom and others, is not taking place.
...continuous/ongoing assessment IS used in English, i.e., to inform teaching and learning, which, I hasten to add, formative assessment does as well. I think we both agree, Charles, that formative assessment works best when it is ongoing, even if in some classrooms evidence that it's part of an overall approach that favors ongoing assessment may be difficult to find. Poor planning might result in a formative assessment being used in something less than a continuous manner. And I say this as someone who works in education/higher ed administration.
My reason for disagreeing with that is when you look at what Spanish education writers who use the term "evaluación procesal" mean by it, you find that it is essentially the same as "formative assessment" (of the teaching and learning process, to improve the curriculum, classroom practice, etc.) and quite different from "continuous assessment" (of student performance, ultimately to determine whether they pass or fail and with what grade). See Neil's quotation:
"la valoración continua del aprendizaje del alumnado y de la enseñanza del profesor, mediante la obtención sistemática de datos"
Or one I quoted:
"proporciona la información necesaria para ir orientando y corrigiendo el proceso educativo. Proporcionará información permanente sobre el alumno y también sobre el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje (evaluación de la organización del aula, de la coordinación del profesorado…)"
I say no one uses "continuous assessment" or "ongoing assessment" to refer to those things.
...(following up on those useful definitions provided by Charles), many writers and theorists continue to use these terms. That said, the expanation of 'procesual' posted by the asker indicates 'que consiste en' what could be easily translated as 'continuous assessment.'' If we are to go by the tenor of this (quasi or default) source text, it would appear a synonym of 'continuous' (in this context of assessment) would be advisable. If so, would that not be 'ongoing.'? It just seems to be the obvious choice.
"Michael Scriven coined the terms formative and summative evaluation in 1967, and emphasized their differences both in terms of the goals of the information they seek and how the information is used. For Scriven, formative evaluation gathered information to assess the effectiveness of a curriculum and guide school system choices as to which curriculum to adopt and how to improve it. Benjamin Bloom took up the term in 1968 in the book Learning for Mastery to consider formative assessment as a tool for improving the teaching-learning process for students." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formative_assessment#Origin_of...
Whereas:
"Continuous assessment is a form of educational examination that evaluates a student's progress throughout a prescribed course. It is often used as an alternative to the final examination system. Proponents of continuous assessment argue that the approach allows tracking of progress and has a chance of offering students more support, guidance, and opportunities to improve during the course or programme." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_assessment
No, I'm NOT saying that formative assessment and continuous assessment are synonymous! I've been banging on here about how they're quite different!
Please look at some definitions of "formative assessment", such as the one I've quoted here from ed.glossary.org. There's a Wikipedia page about it too.
I was responding to the statement in your answer that "not all 'ongoing assessment' is formative; it may be summative as well". That's wrong. First, as I said, ongoing assessment can't be summative because summative assessment is assessment conducted at the end of as process, at a single point in time, retrospectively: it is not in-process. Second, summative assessment is not assessment of student performance (nor is formative assessment). They are assessment of the effectiveness of the teaching and learning process: of the teacher, as much as of students. In contrast, continuous and ongoing assessment are assessment of student performance.
...and ideally ongoing/continuous. For it to be most effective, progress needs to be continuously monitored. A Venn diagram would show overlap between formative and continuous, but if you are suggesting they are synonymous, I'm sorry, but that is simply not true.
No, I'm sorry, but that is quite wrong. Formative assessment is by definition ongoing. And "continuous assessment", as the term normally used, is definitely a method of grading. You are continuing to muddle two completely different processes. One is monitoring the progress of individual students as a way of evaluating them. The other is monitoring the teaching and learning process. Of course there's an overlap; how could there not be? Ultimately, in order to discover how effective your teaching is, you have to assess the work your students are doing. But to conflate the two is a serious error.
...if you're suggesting I wrote that about summative assessment??? Summative assessment simply refers to assessments that count toward students' grades/marks, as opposed to formative assessments, which do not.
I'm saying that your statement that '"formative" and "processual" have clearly distinct meanings from each other' is fallacious in this context. That's a fair point, and well made. Why on earth he ever came up with this word to begin with beats me. What's your take on that?
By the way, I completely agree with you about "continuous assessment", that's another thing entirely.
Simply put, not all formative assessment is 'continous' or 'ongoing.' A teacher may opt to use very little formative assessment. There is overlap, but they are not the same. And 'continous' does not refer to a method of grading, as you suggest in your last post. It simply refers to the notion that students should be continuously evaluated (with both formative assessments and summative assessments).
True, but the question is what is being assessed and for what purpose. Please look at some source material on "evaluación procesual". You will see that it is not a method of assessing the work of students for the purpose of grading them.
It is, in a sense, a form of "continuous assessment" (or "ongoing assessment") of the teaching and learning process, but the term "continuous assessment" is only used as an educational term in English to refer to a method of grading students. Since "evaluación procesual" doesn't refer to that, "continuous assessment" would be a mistranslation.
"Formative assessment refers to a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course. [...] The general goal of formative assessment is to collect detailed information that can be used to improve instruction and student learning while it’s happening. What makes an assessment “formative” is not the design of a test, technique, or self-evaluation, per se, but the way it is used—i.e., to inform in-process teaching and learning modifications." https://www.edglossary.org/formative-assessment/
In other words, I'm saying that your statement that '"formative" and "processual" have clearly distinct meanings from each other' is fallacious in this context. That would only hold if you imagine that "formative" means whatever it can mean in English in any context.
I would say that "procesual" is quite a good translation of what "formative" means in "formative assessment". Let us not fall into the confusion of imagining that "formative" in this phrase means or is understood by anyone involved to mean anything other than what Scriven meant by it.
"Evaluación procesual" has nothing whatever to do with continuous assessment: it has nothing to do with assessing the work of students for the purpose of grading them. It means assessing and improving the teaching and learning process itself.
As I say, you have more knowledge of this area than I do, that's for sure. However, we could flip that last argument you made around and imagine a scenario where a person versed in the intricacies of Spanish and English pedagogy might see the translation of "evaluación procesual" as "formative assessment" as an instance of the translator's ignorance of the term "processual". After all, "formative" and "processual" have clearly distinct meanings from each other.
Having just seen your last posting, I must say that the point you raise about the possible calque of "formativa" in Spanish is a more persuasive argument, for me at least.
Not all continuous assessment is 'formative' (i.e., does not count towards one's final grade). If a synonym of 'continuous assessment' is needed, then that would be 'ongoing assessment,' which could be either 'formative' or 'summative' in nature.
I think the preference in some quarters for "evaluación procesual" rather than "evaluación formativa" in Spanish may be motivated by the fact that "formativo" in Spanish doesn't precisely correspond to "formative" in English. In other words, Spanish theorists here are following Scriven and have translated his term "formative assessment" as "evaluación formativa", but others, perhaps rightly, feel that "procesual" would be a better word in Spanish for what Scriven meant by "formative".
In Spanish, some apparently prefer to call it "evaluación procesual". In English, as far as I can tell, no education theorist calls it "processual assessment"; everyone seems to call it "formative assessment". When I say "it", I mean exactly the same phenomenon. I have seen no evidence that those who prefer the term "evaluación procesual" to "evaluación formativa" in Spanish are talking about something different, or claiming to (if they were, it would be a different matter). So I see no good argument for transferring this (minor) terminological variant into English, where it is apparently not already present. The word "processual" does exist in English, but in general it is appreciably less common than "procesual" in Spanish (I have encountered this issue a number of times in art texts, a different context). Which is not to say that I wouldn't use "processual" where there's a good reason to. But I don't see a good reason to here; I think it would be confusing and raise a reasonable suspicion in an informed reader's mind that a translator unfamiliar with the subject-matter was slavishly calquing the source text.
While I think you're correct when you say the references are mostly translated, your own reference does suggest this is the preferred term at least for Bonvecchio and Maggioni. In addition, processual is an established word in English. That's not to say your idea isn't clearly a good choice too.
The sentence I posted isn't actually what I'm translating, just a random example to get things going. I've just come up against "patrimonialización" further on in the job and I'm wrestling with that right now... I'll come back to this one later :-)
I think you have to rewrite this sentence because evaluación procesual and valoración continua both mean the same thing, continuous assessment. I would take one of them out.
Yes, that sounds like what we used to call "continuous assessment" in the UK... I find the trinomial a bit long-winded though... I might just go old school on this one :-)
Explanation: This is NOT continuous assessment, which is a form of assessment of learners/students by teachers, as opposed to final tests/exams. As the sample text you've posted shows, "evaluación procesual" is a method of evaluating the learning and teaching process itself. It's not a method of determinaing students' marks/grades for the course; its aim is to improve the "proceso didáctico".
"EVALUACIÓN PROCESUAL: proporciona la información necesaria para ir orientando y corrigiendo el proceso educativo. Proporcionará información permanente sobre el alumno y también sobre el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje (evaluación de la organización del aula, de la coordinación del profesorado…)." http://www.eumed.net/rev/ced/29/fbg.htm
The point is that it collects data during the process; it's ongoing, as opposed to a final evaluation at the end, of a retrospective kind.
These two kinds of assessment are called formative and summative in English (don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger). The terms and concepts were introduced by Michael Scriven in 1967: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formative_assessment
Evaluación procesual is another name for evaluación formativa. The following is from a Mexican master's dissertation on the subject:
"Tipos de evaluación [...] Para Castillo (2002), existen etapas en el proceso Enseñanza-Aprendizaje: antes, durante y después; por tal motivo, la tipología de la evaluación estará constituida por tres momentos, a saber: diagnóstica, formativa y sumativa. En cambio, Bonvecchio y Maggioni (2006) le asignan nombres diferentes a la formativa y sumativa, identificándolas como procesual y de resultados, respectivamente. [...] Formativa. Pertenece al durante. También conocida como evaluación procesual (Artiles, Mendoza y Yera, 2008), continua, de seguimiento, permanente o proactiva" (pp. 44–46). https://repositorio.itesm.mx/bitstream/handle/11285/571011/D...
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 4 hrs (2018-11-10 23:37:22 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
To be honest, "process evaluation" would express the meaning, but I would use the established term "formative assessment", because that way people who know about educational theory will get what you're talking about (or they can look it up).
Charles Davis Spain Local time: 00:53 Specializes in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 676
Grading comment
Selected automatically based on peer agreement.
7 hrs confidence:
ongoing assessment
Explanation: If you need a term that could easily be used as a synonym of 'continuous assessment,' this is it.
Ongoing Assessment | Teaching Diverse Learners - Brown University https://www.brown.edu/academics/education.../assessment/ongo... Ongoing Assessment of Language, Literacy, and Content Learning. **Ongoing assessment of student learning provides **continuous feedback** on the effectiveness ...
Note that 'formative assessment' is slightly different in a technical sense: not all formative assessment is 'ongoing assessment,' and not all 'ongoing assessment' is formative; it may be summative as well (see distinctions between 'formative' and 'summative' assessment).
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