The pursue of inclusiveness is an important common goal at basic educational systems nowadays. Not only learning to learn is a principal competence to develop, but also doing so in acceptance of different points of departure regarding teaching goals, and also in prevision of different learning, abilities, experiences and achievement. This study focuses on exploring a new assessment proposal using written exams with a particular design to foster metacognitive awareness and learners’ engagement, with an explicit consideration for inclusiveness, called Synchronous Self-Assessment (SSA) (Remesal, 2021). This strategy leads students to take two important decisions on their learning assessment: picking assessment activities to respond and deciding on the weighed grading among them. The fact of having to take these decisions directly affect students’ emotions and self-efficacy in the assessment situation, also catering for inclusiveness, since participation is facilitated with the traditional “one-size-fits-all” left aside. This strategy has been successfully implemented for over a decade at Bachelor Degree (Remesal & Estrada, 2022; Estrada, 2021). For the first time, this innovative strategy is implemented at Secondary Education. The participants in this study were 100 7th grade (12-13 years old) high school students from an urban school in the state of Yucatan, Mexico. Students (assigned to experimental or control group) resolved a written exam in the third term of the school year, in their mother tongue subject (Spanish). The research follows a mixed-method design: students were invited to answer a non-linguistic (hence, minimally intrusive) emotions test before and after the exam. Later on, an open-ended questionnaire was also responded and eventually a small selection of students are interviewed individually. In this symposium we present results relating to these students’ emotional reactions to their first experience of synchronous self-assessment. Preliminary results reveal some differences in emotions prior to and after solving the exam. Positive emotions prior to the exam showed a general increase –though not significant. In emotions after the exam, we found a significant increase in the sense of control among the students experiencing SSA for this first time. In the individual interviews, adolescent students manifested altogether a positive reception of this new assessment strategy. Most of them express their appreciation of having the opportunity to take the two decisions offered by SSA (concerning which tasks to solve and how to weigh grades on them). Hence, SSA proves to be useful at compulsory secondary level.

Estrada, F.G. (2021). Revisión y modificación de concepciones del profesorado sobre la evaluación a través de la autoevaluación sincrónica. Paper presented at Xv Congresso Internazionale sull’educazione e l’innovazione. Firenze, Dec.13th-15th. Remesal, A. (2021). Synchronous Self-Assessment: Assessment from the other Side of the Mirror. In: Z. Yan & L.Yang (Eds) Assessment as learning: Maximising opportunities for student learning and achievement. Routledge. Remesal, A.; Estrada, F.G. (2022). Boosting students’ engagement through synchronous self-assessment: a first in-depth look. Paper presented at SIG1+4 EARLI. Cádiz June 27th-30th,-2022. Remesal, A.; Estrada, F.G.; Corrial, C.L. (2022). Exams for the purpose of meaningful learning: new chances with synchronous self-assessment. In J.L.Gómez-Ramos & I.Mª Gómez-Barreto (Eds.) Design and Measurement Strategies for Meaningful Learning. IGI-Global, chapter 10, 192-211.