Resumo

This paper presents the process of constructing the Final Undergraduate Paper (FUP) of a Business Administration course under the Emancipatory Assessment paradigm and its theoretical and methodological approaches. This guidance has been characterized by a process of description, analysis, and criticism of a certain situation, the FUP, aiming at its transformation. It is intended to demonstrate that the subjects, when involved in each educational action, can manage their own action alternatives with a view to the construction of new educational practices.

Assessment is associated with human experiences in itself. However, assessment is far from that which occurs in the educational field. The concept of assessment has been built by the transmission of individual experiences, which highlights the idea of grades, passing or failing grades, authority or classification of students, for the most diverse purposes. The new theoretical-practical approaches provide a critical-social perspective to the assessment processes (the understanding of the actions, the involvement of people and the form of intervention in the process as a whole).

Assessing an activity like the Final Undergraduate (FUP) Paper means knowing its theoretical and practical structure and identifying the elements that may favor or limit the process, the possible risks and the difficulties that shall be faced. Then, the forms of assessment shown did not seem to be in line with the FUP base document proposal in terms of form and scope as there was a mismatch between theory and practice. From then on, it was suggested to use of Emancipatory Assessment.

This new approach would allow the deconstruction of theories and practices already experienced about assessment and, at the same time, the theoretical reworking with the new metaphors that would allow us to achieve the proposed objectives. With the possibility of reorganizing knowledge and practices under the logic of the Emancipatory Assessment, it was possible to visualize the construction of a dialogical knowledge among the project participants.

The new assessment process showed that: a) the subjects’ involvement in decision making, the democratic mediation of the speeches and the respect for personal contributions were crucial in the development of the actions proposed; b) the students’ need to share and discuss actions with the supervisors allowed everyone to experience, in some way, the democratic spirit of teamwork. The results achieved indicate that the Emancipatory Assessment process reached its objectives to the extent that it enabled the subjects involved in the process to accomplish what had been initially proposed.

A new awareness emerges, in a way, as it is possible to build knowledge in an interaction experience. These new relationships, when establishing links, allow us to show and relate knowledge and reality. In this way, a pedagogical space is produced for reading reality, theoretical discussion, and methodological procedures. It also highlights the importance of research by reviving new educational practices and promoting change in professors’ attitudes, mobilizing innovation mechanisms within institutions and partners in the training of qualified professionals for the job market.