Conference Program

This contribution critically interrogates the notion of assessment as a central node of the school experience, placing it in tension with the practices of home education (homeschooling). Whilst in formal schooling assessment functions as a key dispositif, frequently embedded in everyday practices and the hidden curriculum, in homeschooling contexts it tends to be marginalised, driven by the belief that it may interfere with the child's well-being and with an educational relationship genuinely centred on the learner.

The paper explores the tensions between two paradigms. On the one hand, school-based assessment, despite its well-known limitations (standardisation, rigidity, selective function), has increasingly opened up to perspectives of formative assessment and assessment for learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998): a continuous process of gathering evidence, providing feedback, and enabling reciprocal regulation between teaching and learning, capable of fostering awareness, self-regulation, and student participation. In this view, assessment does not merely certify outcomes but becomes a public device for recognition and the construction of shared meaning. On the other hand, home education practices tend to privilege personalisation, flexibility, and the suspension of formal judgement, at times leading to its implicit removal.

The marginalisation of assessment in homeschooling does not, however, imply its absence. Rather, it is transformed into implicit and informal practices which, whilst echoing some principles of formative assessment (continuous observation, responsiveness to learners' needs, centrality of feedback), risk remaining under-theorised and difficult to make visible and communicable within a broader social space (Restiglian & Busato, 2024; 2025).

The contribution does not aim to oppose schooling and homeschooling, but rather to identify a shared space for enquiry: how can assessment processes be reconfigured as democratic practices, capable of supporting well-being without relinquishing the public dimension of education? To what extent can formative assessment act as a mediating ground between the need for personalisation and the need for socially shared recognition of learning? In this regard, Boud's notion of sustainable assessment is particularly relevant, as it highlights the importance of developing practices that support learners beyond formal schooling, fostering self-assessment and lifelong learning capabilities (Boud, 2000).

From this perspective, the paper proposes to rethink assessment as a situated, dialogic, and plural practice which, consistent with a view of education as a common good (UNESCO, 2021), is able to integrate the demands for personalisation emerging from homeschooling without renouncing its social function. Assessment, thus conceived, is neither mere certification nor its negation, but rather a formative space in which feedback, negotiation of meanings, and the co-construction of shared criteria sustain an ongoing tension towards still-unexplored educational possibilities.