Assessment is increasingly perceived as a key element in the educational processes, as it is considered a critical part of an effective teaching (Taras, 2005). An extensive body of literature focus on the relationships between summative and formative assessment, learning outcomes and the students’ motivation and learning strategies (Zeng, Huang, Yu, & Chen, 2018). Similarly, as suggested by Feresidi (2016), great attention is given to the teacher, who plays a dual role in assessing the performance of the students, but also supporting their individual self-assessment and self-regulation skills. To date, two main assessment approaches can be highlighted: summative and formative assessment). They are characterized by substantial differences: while the former is mainly used to judge students’ learning achievement mainly throughout “assessment of learning” strategies, the latter promotes the students’ ongoing learning throughout “assessment for learning” strategies.

This paper aims at exploring the dimension of the Assessment as Learning (AaL), which is considered a sub-set of assessment for learning approach (Earl, 2006). According to the AaL model, assessment facilitates the development of students’ metacognition. Earl (2014) stresses the importance of students’ regulatory process, which occurs when they monitor what they are learning and use the feedback from this monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations, and even major changes in what they understand.

The scientific literature concerning the dimension of the assessment in higher education stresses how it should be appropriate to actively involve students in the perspective of learning empowerment in terms of achievement of greater autonomy. It is also important to plan assessment moments during the course, adopting the assessment for and as learning model (Boud & Falchikov 2007; Earl, 2014; Sambell et al. 2012). This approach could be also considered useful to actively prevent early school leaving and educational failure since it means not only the exit from the educational paths but also a perception of inadequacy, irregular frequencies, disengagement, failure (Girelli & Bevilacqua, 2018).

In the 2018-2019 academic year, within the bachelor’s degree in Organizational Training of the University of Verona (Italy), in the course of “Methodology of the pedagogical research” an educational experience characterized by the assessment as learning approach has been implemented (Bevilacqua, 2018). In order to support students dealing with high-level cognitive processes, the teacher provided a formative assessment path based on moments of peer-assessment of authentic tasks, as well as on self-assessment regarding the individual achievement of micro-objectives. Finally, a moment dedicated to the summative assessment is envisaged, with a discussion of the individual portfolio to verify the mastery of knowledge and skills. The adoption of the pedagogical-didactic approach of the flipped learning (Talbert, 2017), as well as of appropriate educational technologies, was useful to manage the activities in a large class.

The questions that led the researcher to undertake this research are: What are the students' perceptions of the AaL approach? What kind of cognitive actions has been implemented by students during the assessment moments? What kind of strengths and difficulties did students experience? Therefore, this research was aimed at identifying the elements that contribute to the reconstruction of an interpretative framework concerning both the perception, as well as the actions experienced by students concerning the AaL approach.

, was useful to manage the activities in a large class.

The research has been contextualized within the ecological paradigm, since it allows to grasp, through the use of qualitative research methodologies, the essence and the qualities of the reality. The naturalistic epistemological approach indicates the need to study the phenomenon in the context in which it ordinarily presents itself, in order to understand the interweaving of the relationships that structure the reality (Mortari, 2007). The sequential qualitative mixed method designs (Morse, 2010) includes in the first phase the analysis of the self-assessment and peer-assessment forms compiled by the students, to understand the cognitive processes they; in the second phase, descriptive focus groups will be carried out to understand the students' perception concerning the AaL approach. Adopting two different research methodologies also allows increasing the scientific rigour of the research results, thanks to the data triangulation process (Denzin, 1973). The inductive content analysis (ICA) has been adopted for the qualitative data analysis. The ICA is a method of analyzing written, verbal or visual messages, which is often used also as a document analysis (Elo, Kyngas, 2008). It allows obtaining a concise and broad description of the phenomenon, through the elaboration of concepts and categories that contribute to the elaboration of models, conceptual systems, conceptual maps that allow the researcher to understand the phenomenon. THE ICA doesn’t include a simple description of the data, but it deeply deals with the meanings, the intentions, the consequences and the context in which the phenomenon is located (Downe-Wamboldt, 1992). For this reason, during the analytical phase, the researcher considered it useful to adopt the principles that characterize the phenomenological approach, to guide both her methodological choices and her posture. paying particular attention to the qualities in which things have been described. The principles of evidence and fidelity have been experiencing, to grasp the phenomenon as it was described. For this purpose it was essential to first implement an unconditional listening to the words written by the students, then scrupulous attention to the words. To achieve this, a constant process of self-reflexivity has been promoted, that means a questioning of the tacit assumptions and the conceptual devices that usually influence the researcher’s posture (Mortari, 2002).

The course “Methodology of the pedagogical research” was implemented between October 2018 and January 2019, therefore the data gathering and the data analysis processes are still ongoing. Among the expected outcomes, the researcher includes benefits regarding students’ learning outcomes, the strengthening of their transversal skills (especially the “learning to learn” key competence”), as well as the individual well-being.

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