Revista Multidisciplinaria Perspectivas Investigativas
Multidisciplinary Journal Investigative Perspectives
Vol. 6(1), 30-37, 2026
Concepciones evaluativas y prácticas docentes en educación rural en Colombia
Evaluative concepts and teaching practices in rural education in Colombia
Jonatan Eduardo Guerra-García
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INTRODUCTION
The assessment of learning is an essential component for understanding and transforming
teaching practices, especially in rural contexts where structural, social and cultural conditions
have specific characteristics that require tailored educational responses, as argued by Moreno
et al. (2019) when analysing educational processes in territories with distinctive characteristics.
In the Latin American context, the use of standardised assessments has generated debate
about their relevance in diverse territories, as they tend to obscure local realities and, in turn,
reproduce educational inequalities, as pointed out by Ravela et al. (2018) in their studies on
measurement systems in the region.
Within the Colombian education system, assessment is governed by Decree 1290 of 2009
(Ministry of National Education, 2009), which establishes formative assessment as the central
pedagogical orientation for teaching and learning processes. However, multiple studies indicate
that there is a persistent tension between this regulatory framework and actual assessment
practices in institutions, particularly in rural areas where material and educational conditions
differ substantially from the urban context, as documented by Santos-Guerra (2020) in his
analyses of educational assessment. Likewise, rural institutions face limitations in infrastructure,
teaching resources and access to continuing teacher training, which conditions the ways in
which assessment is conceived and implemented in everyday school life, a situation that has
been studied by Pérez and Montoya (2021) in their examination of pedagogical realities in
remote areas.
With regard to the department of Córdoba, educational indicators are worrying and deserve
priority attention in regional public policies. According to DANE (2022), the illiteracy rate in rural
areas reaches 9.2%, contrasting significantly with the 2.7% urban rate, reflecting historical
inequalities in access to educational opportunities. Similarly, standardised test results show
significant gaps between rural and urban students, with rural institutions consistently performing
at lower levels according to ICFES reports (2023). These figures reflect not only learning
limitations, but also questions about the relevance of the assessment tools used and their ability
to recognise the knowledge constructed in rural contexts.
The teaching of Spanish in rural contexts takes on substantive relevance, as it constitutes a
cross-cutting area for the development of communication skills that enable access to knowledge
in all disciplines, as Cassany (2019) argues when examining literacy practices in various
educational contexts. However, assessment approaches in this area tend to prioritise the
measurement of grammatical content over the development of functional communication skills,
a situation that Lomas (2018) identifies as a disconnect between the educational objectives of
the curriculum and actual classroom practices. In this sense, this gap between educational
objectives and assessment practices is accentuated in rural areas, where students' cultural and
linguistic references differ from the assumptions in curricula and standardised assessments that
tend to homogenise educational experiences.
In this regard, Prieto and Contreras (2018) identified that teachers with traditional conceptions
tend to favour summative and quantitative assessment, while those who hold constructivist
perspectives implement more varied and formative strategies that recognise the learning
process. Meanwhile, in rural Latin American contexts, research such as that carried out by Díaz
et al. (2023) reveals that teachers develop contextualised assessment adaptations, although
often intuitively and without institutional systematisation that would allow these pedagogical
experiences to be shared.
From the constructivist perspective of assessment, theoretically supported by authors such as
Black and Wiliam (2018), it is proposed that assessment should be a tool for learning and not
merely a measure of it, which implies transforming traditional practices centred on grading. In
this vein, this approach involves actively engaging students through specific feedback,
transparent criteria, and opportunities for self-regulation that allow them to understand and
improve their learning processes. On the other hand, sociocultural theory emphasises that all
assessment occurs in specific cultural contexts that determine what is valued as legitimate
learning, as Vygotsky (1978) argued when developing his contributions on cognitive
development in social contexts.