The promotion of educational success and particularly the assessment process are key aspects in the current educational research. In the Portuguese context what students learn is disseminated by rankings made on the basis of external assessments (standardized tests, national examinations and final exams) that allow comparisons between schools or regions by country. An extensive body of research on assessment suggests that teachers’ conceptions of assessment influence their assessment practices and how they relate these practices to the teaching and learning process (Fletcher et al., 2012; Samuelowicz & Bain, 2002; Brown & Hirschfeld, 2008; Pereira, 2016). Studies on this topic found that teachers' conceptions of assessment can be understood in terms of improvement of teaching and learning; school accountability; student accountability, or treating assessment as irrelevant (Brown, 2004) as well as teacher’s conceptions reflect the differing practices of assessment by level of schooling (Brown et al., 2011). In the Portuguese context, the curriculum of basic and secondary education assumes that schools are given autonomy for curriculum development in order to reinforce the dynamics of assessment by focusing on the diversity of tools enabling greater awareness of the effectiveness of the work carried out and monitoring at the first sign of difficulty in pupils' learning. The assessment process in these levels of schooling is divided into i) internal assessment that comprises the formative assessment; the summative assessment and the mobilization of diversified and adequate techniques, instruments and procedures and ii) the external assessment that establishes, depending on the nature of each educational and training offer, the performance of standardized tests; final tests of basic education and national examinations (Decree-law n.55/2018). Thus, this study is part of a larger research project “Assessment in Basic and Secondary Education: practices and conceptions of teachers about internal and external assessment in Portuguese schools” funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (CEECIND/03157/2018) that has a strong empirical component in order to get to know the teachers’ conceptions and practices of assessment in Basic and Secondary Education and to understand to what extent the external and internal assessment influences the quality of learning and how they relate to each other. In particular, the present study presents the literature review concerning the assessment of students learning in Portuguese basic and secondary education in the last ten years (2011-2021) to find out what kinds of themes and conclusions emerge from recent research in this field.

As a first step, the Scientific Open Access Repositories of Portugal (RCAAP) was chosen for review since we intended to analyse the state of the art in the field of assessment in the Portuguese context. As a second step, master's dissertations and doctoral thesis carried out in the Portuguese context and written in the Portuguese language were selected from 2011 until 2021. As a third step, a choice of the keyword “assessment of learning” was made to carried out the search, since the purpose of the study was to find out what kinds of themes and conclusions emerge from recent research in this field. From the first search 67 doctoral dissertations and master thesis were identified. After examination of the abstracts and in some cases the complete article, 36 thesis and dissertations were excluded since they were not in the focus of our study, covering topics such as higher education, teacher evaluation and professional education. In addition, the thesis and dissertations that were written in Portuguese but were carried out in other contexts such as Brazil, Angola and São Tomé e Príncipe were discarded. As a consequence, 31 doctoral dissertations and master thesis were selected. Content analysis was used to identify the emerging categories in order to describe, in a systematic and articulated way, the meaning of the data collected (Schreier, 2012). The 31 articles were analysed concerning (1) aims of the study, (2) participants, (3) method, (4) main results and (5) conclusions.

The master's dissertations and doctoral theses analysed show a wide range of research on assessment in basic and secondary education in the Portuguese context. The main results of this review show that research over the last ten years present in Scientific Open Access Repositories of Portugal (RCAAP) draws attention to different issues: - Conceptions and practices of assessment, namely as regards as assessment criteria, instruments, assessment methods, educational policies and the relation between the conceptions and the practices; - Formative and summative assessment and its effects on learning; - External assessment (standardized tests and national exams) and its impact on teaching, learning and assessment; - Assessment and inclusion (students with special needs) - Skills’ development on assessment; - Feedback; - The importance of new technologies and assessment. Based on the master's dissertations and doctoral theses reviewed, the following features were identified: - Participants were mostly teachers, although there were a considerable number of studies where students and both teachers and students participated. - Most of studies used a qualitative methodology; - Most studies are within the scope of masters in teaching and masters in educational sciences.

Brown, G. (2004). Teachers' conceptions of assessment: implications for policy and professional development. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 11 (3), 301-318. Brown, G., & Hirschfeld, G. (2008). Students’ conceptions of assessment: links to outcomes. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 15 (1), 3-17. Brown, G., Lake, R., & Matters, G. (2011). Queensland teachers’ conceptions of assessment: The impact of policy priorities on teacher attitudes. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27 (1), 210- 220. Fletcher, R., Meyer, L., Anderson, H., Johnston, P., & Rees, M. (2012). Faculty and Students Conceptions of Assessment in Higher Education. Higher Education, 64 (1), 119- 133. Pereira, D. (2016). Assessment in Higher education and quality of learning: perceptions, practices and implications. Universidade do Minho: Braga, Portugal. Samuelowicz, K., & Bain, J. D. (2002) Identifying academics’ orientations to assessment practice. Higher Education, 43 (2), 173-201. Schreier, M. (2012). Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice. London: Sage.