Portuguese university students' conceptions of assessment: taking responsibility for achievement

After 20 years of the Bologna Declaration, Portuguese universities claim to be implementing student-centred and involved assessment practices. Student conceptions of assessment matter when innovations and reforms in assessment practices are being implemented. This study is part of a larger research project entitled "Assessment in higher education: the potential of alternative methods" funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Government Funding Agency) (PTDC/MHCCED/2703/2014). This paper surveys a large sample (N = 5549) of Portuguese students in five public universities with a Portuguese version of the Students Conceptions of Assessment (SCoA-VI) inventory, previously validated in Brazil. Confirmatory factor analysis recovered the eight SCoA factors reported in the Brazilian context. Differences in mean score for the eight factors were trivial for institutional and student factors. Overall, students agreed that assessment for student improvement was not ignored. Scale inter-correlations revealed interesting inverse relations between improvement and irrelevance functions.Portuguese national funds through the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) within the framework of the CIEC (Research Center for Child Studies of the University of Minho) project under the reference UIDB/00317/2020The project reported in this paper was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Government Funding Agency) (PTDC/MHCCED/2703/2014) and co-financed by European Regional Development Funds (FEDER), Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program (POCI01-0145-FEDER-007562)