Technical Report · January 007 citations reads 320,648 author: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects

a) Initial, predictive or diagnostic evaluation 
 
 
The information obtained from this modality might be referred to a group 
(classroom). In this case, it is named prognosis or diagnosis (a student). This kind of 
evaluation aims at knowing the students’ situation at the starting point of the 
teaching/learning process in order to compare it with the knowledge acquired at the end 
of the completed work. The information gathered must allow the exploration and 
knowledge for each student of the classroom of: 

The degree of acquisition regarding the previous learning 
requirements. 

The alternative patterns or spontaneous ideas of reasoning and the 
spontaneous performance strategies. 

The attitudes and acquired habits in relation to the learning 
process. 

The representations that are carried out of the proposed areas. 
This is what Halwachs (1975) called adoption strategies.
The set of activities for the initial evaluation must be related to the motivation and 
previous knowledge activation (open surveys and semantic networks, multiple choice quizzes, 
observation patterns and interviews …). They must not be identified with exams or excluding 
tests. 
b) Formative or procedural evaluation 
 
 
 
It always comes together with the teaching/learning process. It has a regulatory, 
orientative and self-assessment approach of the educational process. It provides constant 
information about whether the process is suitable for the students’ necessities or not. The 

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formative evaluation must broaden some of its pillars with a communicative approach. For 
Cardinet (1992), such an approach opens new perspectives to the learning process, which 
overcomes some limits of the formative evaluation since it proposes the auto-regulation by 
means of