Collaborer pour mieux évaluer : analyse des croyances épistémologiques d’enseignants d’histoire du Québec et du Canada

Abstract

The Fédération des écoles privées du Québec, in collaboration with the Historical Thinking for Canada's Future project, have joined force to create an examination template for the third year Secondary history course. During working meetings, the research team, composed of teachers, researchers and a pedagogical advisor, formulated a first prototype on the theme of Jacques Cartier's travels. The assessment grid decided upon had vague criteria as teachers wanted to have more leeway in deciding the quality of students’ response. After administering the test to their students, the team has analyzed the students' answers in order to highlight the grading criteria that the teachers seemed to value. In the end, we can conclude that these criteria are very specific and are based on the epistemology of history thus illustrating a form of contradiction between the vague grading criteria shared with students and the true criteria used by teachers.