Socially Just Assessment in Initial Teacher Education: Analysis of a Participatory Co-Construction Experience in Chile

Abstract

University assessment processes tend to prioritize testing of rote knowledge over critical thinking and the common good. Socially Just Assessment (SJA) aims to subvert these traditional logics; however, its implementation in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) remains scarce. This qualitative study, exploratory in scope, analyzes a participatory experience within an initial practicum course of a Language and Literature Education program in Santiago, Chile. The methodological design enacted the principles of SJA through a pedagogical sequence consisting of five sessions of co-design and collective validation between a teacher and her students. The results demonstrate that the exercise inverted traditional roles and redistributed pedagogical power. Furthermore, strengthening autonomy and teacher identity. In conclusion, assessment co-design constitutes an empirical practice of justice that transforms the classroom into a democratic space.

1. Introduction

One of the main challenges in higher education is to generate authentic, participatory, just, and contextualized assessment processes (Nieminen & Lahdenperä, 2024). Despite this, evidence shows that university professors still assess memorization and focus more on grading outcomes than on valuing learning processes and reflection (Edwards, 2020; Moreno-Olivos, 2021; Al-Sabbah et al., 2022).

These challenges become more apparent when viewed from the perspective of Socially Just Assessment (SJA). From this approach, beyond grading memorization and seeking reliability, assessment processes must critically analyze their ideological purposes, cultural contributions, and the diversity of forms of representation, expression, and participation (Hanesworth et al., 2019).

Unlike traditional methods, SJA incorporates and legitimizes student participation in the design of assessment procedures and instruments, provides equitable opportunities for the expression of knowledge, and stimulates reflection on relationships of domination, exclusions, and social injustices (Hattingh, 2023). Furthermore, SJA conceives assessment practices as contextual, ideologized, and subjective events; it focuses on emotional dynamics, problematizes power positions, and promotes co-responsibility for the common good (Heiser et al., 2023).

Multiple lines of evidence demonstrate the importance of integrating SJA into teaching processes (Alordiah & Arisi, 2025; Hattingh, 2023; McArthur, 2023). In Initial Teacher Education (ITE), studies show the benefits of promoting education with and for social justice (Nganga & Kambutu, 2024). In Chile, research concludes that it is necessary to problematize the structural inequalities that sustain the educational system during ITE. Furthermore, research underscores the imperative of granting pedagogical legitimacy to pre-service teachers’ biographical trajectories within instructional processes, incorporating historically marginalized perspectives into the curriculum, and explicitly addressing dynamics of social exclusion and inequality (Peña & Montecinos, 2016; Paz & Silva, 2019).

Despite the centrality of social justice frameworks in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) (Cochran-Smith, 2019), literature reviews reveal that teacher training has not systematically addressed Socially Just Assessment (SJA) (Hosseini et al., 2024). To address this gap, this article examines the participatory co-construction of an assessment process in initial teacher training. Specifically, the study addresses the following research question: How does implementing an assessment co-design pedagogical sequence enact the principles of Socially Just Assessment and reconfigure power relations between a teacher and her students? Building upon this inquiry, the significant contribution of this study is the analysis of a just and participatory assessment experience in the education of future Language and Literature teachers.

2. Theoretical Framework

Socially Just Assessment (SJA) refers to evaluation practices and approaches that are grounded in principles of equity, inclusion, and democratic, formative, and critical evaluation (Murillo & Hidalgo, 2018). From its theoretical foundation, it proposes the full participation of the student body to subvert subordination relationships within assessment practices. Likewise, SJA fosters reflection on how teaching and assessment can transform the dynamics of social exclusion (Aquario, 2021).

Under this approach, assessment is conceived as a political practice that questions who assesses, how, and for what social and educational purpose. SJA places the cultural implications of assessment and participatory mechanisms to deliberate for the common good at the center of the debate (McArthur, 2016). McArthur (2020) contends that student participation within SJA goes beyond interacting in a deliberative system; it implies reflecting on the incidence of assessment on identities, questioning knowledge, analyzing its contribution to society, and seeking both collective and individual well-being.

This evaluative co-responsibility aligns with the premises of Young (2005), who argues that social responsibility requires all actors to structurally contribute to combating injustices. Crucial to this argument is Fraser’s (2005) distinction between two types of injustices: socioeconomic injustices, manifested in exploitation, resource inequality, and lack of access; and cultural or symbolic injustices, rooted in discourses and representation mechanisms.

For Fraser (2005, p. 75), the most significant cultural injustice is misrepresentation, which occurs when “political boundaries or decision rules unjustly deny some people the possibility of participating on a par with others.” Politically, participation is a civic right that improves social relations within its spheres of application, as it fosters a critical understanding of reality, the construction of democratic values, deliberation, and the recognition of differences (Trilla & Novella, 2011).

In the field of SJA, participatory processes question assessment as a mechanism that perpetuates individualism, surveillance, and control (Le Grange et al., 2022). Nieminen and Carless (2023) suggest that participation in self- and peer-assessment processes is not merely a pedagogical strategy but a core component of constructivist and socially committed assessment. By becoming directly involved in the assessment of their learning, students become active and critical agents in the construction of knowledge.

Participation is authentic when communities actively deliberate on who should participate, for what purposes, under what political conditions, and with what limits of representation. Trilla and Novella (2001) classify four levels of participation: (1) simple, in which students act as passive observers or executors in matters that concern them; (2) consultative, in which students express their opinions on specific topics; (3) projective, in which students assume an active role by planning, designing, and executing processes of interest to them; and (4) metaparticipative, in which students create new spaces and mechanisms for participation. Articulating this distinction within the field of Socially Just Assessment (SJA), simple and consultative levels perpetuate power asymmetries by relegating students to passive recipients of predetermined criteria. Conversely, projective and metaparticipative participation constitute genuine practices of representative justice (Fraser, 2005) and structural co-responsibility (Young, 2005). Within SJA, transitioning toward projective and metaparticipative levels not only democratizes the design of assessment instruments and grading criteria but also transfers pedagogical agency to students (Nieminen & Carless, 2023). This shift subverts traditional hierarchical control, transforming assessment into a deliberative space oriented toward recognizing the common good and deconstructing cultural injustices in the classroom (McArthur, 2020).

For assessment to be effective for learning, it must be a critical, authentic, dialogic, and participatory process that considers the voices of both teachers and students (Chong & McArthur, 2023). Critical perspectives on formative assessment suggest that didactic interaction should focus on the joint review of assessment criteria, continuous feedback, and the regulated and self-regulated identification of performance gaps (Black & Wiliam, 2018; Carless & Boud, 2018). Furthermore, these perspectives highlight the importance of promoting collective ownership of assessment language, reflection on learning, peer interaction, and a full understanding of the purposes of assessment practices (Panadero & Lipnevich, 2022). Ultimately, SJA proposes eradicating barriers to participation arising from relational and structural asymmetries. Embedded within discourses, practices, and regulations, these power asymmetries operate based on epistemic injustices to produce and reproduce the notion that students lack the legitimacy to participate in deliberative processes of common concern (McArthur, 2020). Dismantling these hierarchies does not mean erasing the natural differences in experience and knowledge. Instead, it involves abolishing attitudes of oppression and invisibility that undermine individuals’ agency within evaluative contexts (Nieminen & Lahdenperä, 2024).

Based on these ideas, a sequence aimed at the collective construction of an assessment process was designed. This design was grounded in the following theoretical principles of SJA: (1) integrating and legitimizing student perspectives in the creation of assessment procedures and instruments; (2) fostering reflection on the conceptions of teaching, learning, and assessing; (3) making explicit the emotional dynamics involved in assessment practices; (4) promoting reflection on the incidence of assessment on the subjects’ identity; (5) distributing opportunities for self- and peer-assessment; (6) generating a projective participation system to plan, design, and execute the assessment process; and (7) fostering reflection on the power relations inherent to assessment practices.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Research Approach

This study adopts a qualitative approach (Flick, 2015) to highlight the subjective and contextual experience of a teacher and a group of students from a private university in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile. With an exploratory scope, it examines an emerging and underdocumented phenomenon in the Chilean context: the enactment of Socially Just Assessment (SJA) in Initial Teacher Education (ITE).

3.2. Research Context

The initiative to carry out an assessment process under the principles of SJA emerged from one author’s participation in a funded research project on feedback and educational justice: “Feedback and educational justice: practices, conceptions, training, and transformations. Case studies with teachers who train teachers”, whose lead investigator is a co-author of this article. During the first stage of the project (July 2024), one of the authors was interviewed to understand her conceptions regarding feedback as an act of justice. This exploration made it possible to question assessment within professional experience and to plan a pedagogical sequence based on the theoretical framework of SJA.

After identifying weaknesses in the assessment practices of the participating teacher (one of the authors), it was decided to modify the process through an innovation: the students would lead the assessment design. The authors co-designed the planning of the innovation’s pedagogical sequence during two working meetings in August 2024 (with an average duration of 90 min per session). Consequently, a participatory co-construction exercise of the assessments was implemented, involving the teacher and her 12 students over 5 working sessions. The classes took place between September and October 2024, with an approximate duration of 40 min each.

3.3. Design and Procedure of the Participatory Sequence

The innovation was structured as a pedagogical sequence consisting of five 40 min sessions, systematically planned to transfer pedagogical power from the teacher to the students.

Table 1. Procedures and theoretical alignment of the pedagogical sequence.

Session	Co-Design Phase	Methodological Procedure	Aligned SJA Principle (See Theoretical Framework)
1	Conceptual inquiry and establishing expectations	Guided discussion based on students’ prior research regarding assessment criteria	Principle 1 (Legitimizing student perspectives) and Principle 2 (Reflection on assessing)
2–3	Instrument construction and negotiation of descriptors	Small group work to draft performance levels and consensual allocation of scores	Principle 5 (Opportunities for peer-assessment) and Principle 6 (Projective participation system)
4	Collective validation of the draft rubric	Plenary review of the rubric projected on the whiteboard; modification of technical wording based on student requests	Principle 7 (Problematizing power relations in the rubric)
5	Meta-assessment and critical reflection	Guided discussion and critical reflection on the experienced process	Principle 3 (Making explicit emotional dynamics) and Principle 4 (Reflection on identity)

SJA = Socially Just Assessment. Principles 1–7 correspond to the theoretical principles of SJA defined in Section 2 (Theoretical Framework). Source: own elaboration.

details how the seven theoretical principles of SJA were enacted within this pedagogical design.

3.4. Participants

The study employed a non-probability, purposive, and convenience sampling approach (Flick, 2015). Case selection was grounded in three inclusion criteria: (1) being a pedagogical practicum course within Initial Teacher Education; (2) the lead teacher’s willingness to subject her assessment practices to innovation and reflective review; and (3) a class size that facilitated deliberative classroom interaction. Consequently, alongside the research team, the sample comprised all 12 students enrolled in the Intermediate Practicum II course during the second year of the Language and Literature Education program (pre-service Language and Literature teachers). This course represents an initial engagement with the reality of the Chilean school classroom (initial practicum), in which students engage in participant observation.

3.5. Data Collection Techniques

To ensure data triangulation, the research considered three main techniques, differentiated according to their purposes and participating agents:

Semi-structured interviews (Teacher): Two interviews (pre- and post-assessment processes) were conducted with the course professor. The purpose of the first interview was to characterize her initial conceptions regarding evaluative justice; the second interview sought to record her meta-assessment of the process. Both instruments were administered in person, audio-recorded, and transcribed textually.

Audio recordings (Teacher–Student Interaction): The verbal interactions of the five classroom sessions where the participatory process took place were recorded. The purpose of this technique was to capture the live process of negotiation and the emergence of student agency. The audio was captured through ambient recording devices located in the classroom and underwent transcription for conversational analysis.

Field notes (Researchers): A total of seven field notes were collected. Two notes were drafted by the researchers during the planning meetings; the remaining five were logs written by the teacher immediately after each classroom session. The purpose of these notes was to record the relational dynamics, power tensions, and non-verbalized affective responses that emerged in the classroom.

3.6. Data Analysis Procedure

Qualitative data were processed through axial content analysis (Flick, 2015), structured within an iterative inductive-deductive design. The interplay between induction and deduction did not operate as isolated sequential stages, but rather as a continuous pendular movement: the theoretical framework provided a priori deductive categories, whereas immersion in the field enabled the inductive emergence of phenomena unaddressed in prior literature.

Categorical development was executed across three phases:

• Open coding (inductive–deductive articulation): Audio transcripts, interviews, and field notes were fragmented into initial units of meaning. In this phase, deductive analysis guided the identification of units linked to the principles of SJA (McArthur, 2020) and participation (Trilla & Novella, 2001). Simultaneously, inductive analysis captured the emergence of descriptive and in vivo codes directly arising from the participants’ experiences.
• Axial coding (relational integration): The researchers relationally grouped open codes around core conceptual axes and operational dimensions. At this stage, inductive and deductive codes were synthesized into intermediate analytical categories; for instance, students’ concrete proposals and rubric modifications (inductive emergence) were deductively unified under the categorical axis of “Projective Participation” (Trilla & Novella, 2001).
• Selective and macro-categorical coding (theoretical saturation): Through the constant comparative method, axial categories were integrated into three final explanatory macro-categories structuring the findings: (a) the collective design of assessment (procedural dimension); (b) distinctive qualities of the experience (politico-affective dimension); and (c) transformation of conceptions of justice (teacher-reflective dimension).

The constant comparative method functioned as the cross-cutting strategy for analytical integration and validation. This approach allowed for the recursive comparison of the properties, dimensions, and variations of emerging codes across the different data sources. Specifically, conversational patterns recorded in live classroom interactions were contrasted with individual reflections expressed in interviews and observational records from field notes. This iterative contrast ensured categorical saturation, research team reflexivity, and the interpretive validity of the findings.

3.7. Ethical Considerations, Bias Mitigation, and Reporting of Findings

To mitigate social desirability bias, students were explicitly informed that their evaluations of the co-design process would have no bearing on their final course grades. Furthermore, reflective awareness was fostered by establishing that the collective construction process would directly determine the course’s assessment scheme; consequently, students themselves assumed co-responsibility for designing the criteria and instruments through which they would be evaluated.

To neutralize potential bias stemming from the lead instructor’s dual role (acting simultaneously as researcher and course instructor), data analysis was triangulated with the second author, an external researcher not involved in direct classroom management. The textual corpus was analyzed independently by both researchers, with interpretive discrepancies resolved through peer debriefing sessions to ensure analytical credibility and neutrality.

In reporting the findings, the analysis adopts an impersonal voice that includes both researchers. Priority thematic axes are developed by integrating in vivo codes, analytical explanations, and thick descriptions. Direct quotes from the course instructor are labeled as “Teacher 1,” whereas student quotes are anonymized as “Student” followed by an assigned number (1 to 12). All participants voluntarily signed an informed consent form authorizing the use of their data for research purposes under strict confidentiality protocols.

4. Results

4.1. Imagining Together: The Collective Design of the Assessment

As previously indicated, the idea of collectively designing an assessment instance emerged from the teacher’s reflection on educational justice during her first interview. While exploring her evaluation experiences, she recounted an event that she classified as unjust:

In my first semester teaching in university education, I was quite unjust, because I asked the students—who were first-semester civil engineering students—to write an academic essay… I gave out many failing grades. I believe I was not just in that sense, because clearly, they did not have the foundation they needed to be able to do that work.

(Teacher 1)

This experience revealed that the practice was unjust because it neither recognized the course’s prior knowledge nor involved the students in their learning process. This conclusion allowed the researchers to focus two workshop sessions on educational justice and SJA, prioritizing the dimensions of recognition and participation. During these meetings, the teacher questioned her own practices: “How can I make my students participate more and better?” (Teacher 1).

During the working sessions, it was agreed to design a pedagogical sequence based on constructing the assessment with the participation of the student body (previously presented in Table 1). This sequence comprised four stages: inquiry into key concepts to define criteria, collective construction of the instrument, democratic validation of the rubrics, and critical reflection on the process.

The first session was established as a space for reflection on the meaning of assessment and the criteria that should be considered. Previously, each student researched a specific criterion (introduction, description of classroom observations, or pedagogical reflection) to discuss its components and purposes. This preparation made it possible to reach a consensus on the assessment rubric criteria within a democratic space. During the session, the teacher expressed the political and didactic meaning of the dynamic:

I think it is important that each and every one of you brought ideas about “how I imagine this work, what I would include”… and it is good that we have this space to reach agreements, to engage in dialogue, right?… The idea of this exercise is precisely for us to reach a common, more shared vision of how we want this work to be.

(Teacher 1)

This openness to dialogue and the recognition of students as key agents shaped a genuinely participatory process. The students not only shared their ideas but also projected how they wanted the assessment experience to be: “Reflection is like a lesson on what you learned from the work; that is how I see it, like emphasizing the importance of doing this work—the how, the why, why it was useful to me, why it helped me” (Student 3). “By leaving a minimum number of questions in the introduction, the conclusion would be easier for us. So, I think that if we put a minimum of three questions in the introduction as an indicator, it would make it easier to conclude” (Student 1).

In the following two sessions, the students took on a more prominent role, which evidenced a substantial shift in the construction of the assessment: it ceased to be conceived as a unidirectional act and was configured instead as a negotiated and shared practice. The participants created the performance levels for each criterion, negotiated the scores, and reflected on the meaning of the design.

As shown in

Table 2. Changes in the construction of assessment instruments when innovating from an SJA perspective.

Criteria	Assessment Instrument Prior to the SJA Innovation	Assessment Instrument as a Participatory Co-Construction
Construction process	Individual (teacher only)	Collective (students and teacher)
Type of student participation	No student participation	Projective participation
Instrument validation	No validation	Collective and consensual

SJA = Socially Just Assessment. Source: own elaboration.

, the innovation generated a significant transformation in the assessment instruments compared to the teacher’s previous practices. The co-designed instrument redistributes power in the classroom and recognizes the legitimacy of the pre-service teachers’ pedagogical knowledge.

The fourth session, dedicated to collective validation, was conducted following the development of the instrument’s first draft. Students and the teacher examined each criterion to deliberate on its relevance, clarity, and alignment with the course’s formative goals. This review entailed an active redrafting of the rubric grounded in the understanding of those being assessed, as evidenced by Student 7’s account: “We could put that in parentheses: ‘a reflective exercise is a personal thought arising from what was observed,’ so that it becomes clearer.” The fifth and final session consisted of a critical reflection on the overall process, the findings of which are presented in the following section.

4.2. Building Together: Distinctive Qualities of the Experience

The collective construction experience was characterized by student agency, the inversion of traditional roles, meta-assessment, and reflexivity regarding the pedagogical ethos. Students formulated concrete proposals to develop the instruments and actively expressed their suggestions. This involvement translated into substantive participation in decision-making: “We could add commenting on something we learned or that caught our attention in the classroom, something that left an impression on us and that could serve us in the future” (Student 4). The dialogue generated a formative experience in which students assumed leadership roles: “I feel like my own boss” (Student 1).

The analysis corroborates that the inversion of traditional roles favored a progressive delegation of responsibilities toward the student body. This shift materialized in classroom interactions where the students themselves led the debate, resolved doubts, and proposed definitions without turning to the teacher as an authority figure. The following excerpt evidences the transition toward horizontality:

Student 1: But professor, a question: do we put the reflection further down?

Student 6: Yes, should that reflection also go in the conclusion?

(The teacher does not intervene.)

Student 1: That is what is not clear to me.

Student 3: Wouldn’t it be better, so one doesn’t get confused, to do the field note plus the reflection at the same time? I mean, in this case, it can be done in the conclusion.

Student 6: I would say it should be left more open to have that margin and be able to further develop each person’s own criteria.

Another significant dimension was the reduction in uncertainty and stress associated with assessment. During the critical reflection phase, students made explicit that participating in the design facilitated their understanding of the expected performance and promoted an autonomous execution of the task: “It’s fun because, in a way, one… of course, gets involved in their assessment” (Student 2). “It gives us more confidence to do the work” (Student 9). “It is clearer to me having participated than having read the sheet at the moment of writing the field journals” (Student 8).

In the same sense, some students made explicit that having participated in the design of the rubric reduced the uncertainty regarding the process and the stress involved in the assessment instance, facilitating the understanding of the expected performance and promoting a more autonomous execution of the task: “Before, I didn’t know which one to choose and sometimes one gets confused… but now I know what I have to do” (Student 7). “I feel it makes doing the assignments easier, truth be told; I am not thinking much about interpreting it because we wrote it ourselves, so it is very clear what needs to be done” (Student 9). “I feel I would have made a mistake, for example, because it wasn’t clear to me if we had to do a synthesis of the two notes… but now I understood it” (Student 11).

This clarity strengthened the students’ confidence in their evaluative decisions and allowed them to recognize that the exercise resolved difficulties experienced in previous tasks:

I liked this exercise because it makes things clearer; I no longer have to go around deciphering what goes here or guessing what is expected, because sometimes one gets confused and, at least for me, when I don’t understand a point I delay until I understand it. And that sometimes leads to stress or leaving it until the last minute. So, by participating here, I already know what I have to do, and when I get my result back, if I made a mistake in something, I am not going to question why; instead, I am going to remember, “of course, that is what we had agreed upon,” because this is an agreement among all of us.

(Student 8)

The findings demonstrate that the participatory construction was not limited to passive consultation; rather, it activated SJA Principle 6 (projective participation system). According to Trilla and Novella’s (2001) proposal, the students transitioned from consultative participation to projective participation when they assumed control over the technical definition of the instrument. This is evidenced in the following interaction, where the students assume conceptual authorship:

Student 9: By presenting the field note first, when you finish it you can analyze everything you wrote… What ideas from the Framework do you identify in that first note?

Student 7: I mean, I have to identify the domains along with their standards.

Student 9: According to what you wrote… what do you see in what you wrote? Something related to the Framework for Good Teaching…

Student 10: Not only what is fulfilled, but also what is not fulfilled.

This dialogue illustrates how the horizontal dynamic of co-design allows for the collective ownership of assessment language. The students execute a critical deliberation by determining that the instrument must also evaluate “what is not fulfilled.” This methodological action challenges traditional classroom control and puts into practice the concept of justice in terms of representation (Fraser, 2005). On the other hand, an advancement toward meta-participation is evidenced when the students demonstrated agency by proposing a completely new assessment criterion based on peer review:

Student 10: I say that, to make it more interactive, since this work is going to involve all of us… it could be that the personal reflection is compared with the experience of the other classmates and their reports.

Student 9: But we are going to do that before. Comparing the reflection with that of the reports…

Student 8: No, he means looking at our reflection—how you experienced the process—and seeing how the classmate experienced it.

Student 9: So, I put my reflection, and then you read my reflection and comment on my reflection?

Student 10: Yes, and I can compare mine with yours, and so on.

Student 8: Right, differences between classmates: “this work was easy for me, whereas she feels it was difficult,” something like that.

Student 9: Okay, yes, I think that would be really good.

Finally, the process was valued as a professional readiness practice that contributed to grounding the identity of pre-service teachers:

It helped us think like teachers because, in the end, it is an assessment instrument and we built it ourselves. So, it served us for that and also to practice collaborative work, which we are also going to have to do at school at some point… so it was practicing a little bit of that world.

(Student 4)

As a result of this exercise, reflections were also expressed regarding the professional role of the teacher and how it must be mediated for the benefit of those who learn, recognizing the importance of student participation:

A class must have an engagement hook; that is, you have to bring your class down to the students’ reality, and only then are you going to achieve a good class. If there is no participation, it is not a good class, even if the professor gave a huge, super good presentation with a lot of information.

(Student 4)

4.3. Changing the Way We Assess: Reflections on Justice and Participation

This experience transformed the way the teacher conceives of justice and student participation. The meta-assessment of the process led to her adopting a critical stance during the development of the classes:

It is the first time we have done this; I don’t know if you have ever lived through a similar experience. [Students say in unison that they never had]. Neither have I. It is all new, and I feel it has been valuable and has allowed us to clarify some aspects that perhaps we did not have so clear. I believe that is very important because, as teachers, we sometimes believe that we explain everything very clearly, but we realize that each person in their mind forms their own image of what they understood and constructs their own concepts, and sometimes the product is very different from what was expected, right? (…) Having this instance and reaching a closer shared image between teacher and student is something very important to achieve a fairer assessment.

(Teacher 1)

The involvement of the student body allowed the teacher to reformulate the relationship between educational justice and assessment. In the interview after the exercise, the professor indicated that her students perceived the assessment as a fairer act because “they felt recognized in their role, because I wasn’t hovering over them” (Teacher 1). This reflects a redistribution of power in the classroom. While the teacher’s initial conception was limited to an egalitarian and isolated idea of justice, the experience consolidated a notion of SJA linked to participatory democracy:

Now I place more importance on students participating in the process, something I didn’t do before. Before, I had my rubric and explained it in class, and asked openly if anyone had any questions… In contrast, constructing the assessment together brought us closer in that aspect, allowing us to reach a consensus regarding the expected outcome. I feel that the students take on a much more authentic role regarding their professional development because they are facing the exercise of assessing, of building criteria.

(Teacher 1)

The greatest change was evidenced in the teacher’s reflection on how participation eliminates evaluative arbitrariness and promotes social justice:

I was not as aware that these assessment instances, when they were so arbitrary on my part, disregarded the student’s status… Now I believe that students need to empower themselves much more regarding their learning process, and one of the ways to do that is to make them participants in how we are going to assess them… In that sense, I believe this contributes to social justice because the recognition of the “student” as a person who participates in this process means recognizing them as an equally valid individual who deserves to have a voice. This can be transferred to other spaces because, when they themselves become teachers, they can carry out similar exercises and contribute to a fairer society.

(Teacher 1)

In synthesis, the results evidence a sequence of events: the first interview served as the foundation for creating a workshop on socially just assessment. This workshop changed the teacher’s conceptions, which influenced the development of a collective evaluation design. This design modified the professor’s conceptions and was distinguished by student agency. Consequently, these process dynamics explain major findings: a more critical stance on the part of the teacher and the students’ reflection on their own pedagogical identity.

5. Discussion

The results evidence that student participation in the co-design of a socially just assessment encompassed conceptual inquiry and the negotiation of criteria. This practice generated a space for dialogue that made expectations explicit, which in turn favored conceptual understanding and collective decision-making. These findings coincide with previous studies reporting that the co-construction of assessment instruments improves disciplinary knowledge, develops assessment literacy, enhances autonomy, and increases academic motivation (Cano, 2023; Colson et al., 2021; Doyle & Buckley, 2020).

Likewise, the study demonstrates that students took on leadership roles, regulated dialogue, and constructed indicators linked to their professional identity. This evidence challenges findings from research warning that pre-service teachers develop a theoretical identity but lack practical spaces that legitimize their role (Guzmán Munita et al., 2024). In contrast to this, the active role of the students generated an inversion of traditional status by delegating pedagogical responsibilities, which stands in contrast to the tendency to experience assessment as an instrumental technique dissociated from learning (Rodríguez-Venegas et al., 2024).

At a deeper analytical level, the findings demonstrate that the transition from consultative participation toward projective and metaparticipative levels (Trilla & Novella, 2001) operates as a mechanism of epistemic redress in higher education. By legitimizing pre-service teachers’ knowledge during co-design, the process transcends the mere technical negotiation of rubrics and restores students’ status as legitimate knowers within the evaluative domain (Nieminen & Lahdenperä, 2024). This openness recognizes the individual in their integral complexity—articulating their cognitive, affective, and socio-historical dimensions—in sharp contrast to traditional instruction, which conceives students as mere objects of grading (McArthur, 2020). Consequently, the collective construction of assessment not only democratizes the classroom but also enacts a practice of representative and participatory justice (Fraser, 2005) that legitimizes student voice as an authoritative source of pedagogical knowledge.

Furthermore, evidence reveals that the primary transformation generated by this experience lies not in the redistribution of disciplinary knowledge hierarchies, but in the subversion of power asymmetries that have historically permeated assessment practices. In conventional university teaching, assessment frequently operates as a mechanism of surveillance, control, and subordination (Le Grange et al., 2022). The deliberate transfer of evaluative agency to students dismantles these hierarchies, replacing the logic of control with a framework of co-responsibility (Young, 2005). Accordingly, by dismantling the dispositions of invisibilization that nullify student agency, SJA reveals that problematizing evaluative power does not compromise academic rigor; rather, it transforms the pedagogical space into a domain of emancipation and recognition.

On the other hand, participation fostered the exercise of autonomy and a sense of agency—key elements for a praxis oriented toward social justice (Pantić, 2015). This metacognitive dimension agrees with the arguments of Greene et al. (2024) regarding self-regulated learning: by planning and monitoring the assessment, subjects adapt their thoughts and emotions, constructing knowledge about the task and about themselves through experience. Furthermore, the favorable affective involvement identified in this study contradicts previous reports where pre-service teachers claim a lack of clear feedback and just instances for reflection (Figueroa Miralles & Espinosa, 2025).

The students declared that participating in the design reduced stress and eliminated the need to “guess” the teacher’s expectations. This reinforces the notion that assessment is a social practice requiring the co-construction of meanings and that authentic assessment processes act as catalysts for deep and socially just learning (Carless & Young, 2024; McArthur, 2023). Although the literature documents an increase in the shared design of instruments (Smith et al., 2025), implementing it from an SJA perspective remains a challenge that demands accepting the political dimension of assessment and destabilizing traditional academic hierarchies (Hosseini et al., 2024).

Finally, the transformation in the teacher’s conceptions demonstrates the relevance of SJA training for educators to conceive of justice as the legitimate recognition of student voices (Hood, 2024; Sánchez-Lara et al., 2025). This vision coincides with Murillo and Hidalgo (2018), who define SJA as an equitable, critical, and participatory process. In synthesis, our findings suggest that democratic participation in assessment attenuates negative emotional responses (Chory-Assad et al., 2017), redistributes power, democratizes classroom interactions, and promotes the problematization of professional practice based on authentic assessment (McArthur, 2020; Sánchez-Lara et al., 2023).

6. Conclusions

Based on the empirical findings of this exploratory qualitative study, it is concluded that evaluative co-design is a viable mechanism for transforming traditional practices in higher education. The evidence gathered demonstrates that when the voices of pre-service teachers are legitimized through horizontal pedagogical sequences, a two-dimensional influence occurs: political (through the redistribution of power in the classroom) and affective (evidenced by the perception of reduced stress and increased confidence among students).

Likewise, the empirical data allow for the conclusion that teacher education oriented toward social justice should not be limited solely to theoretical instruction on inequalities. On the contrary, the situated and participatory experience of a collectively constructed assessment rubric provides pre-service teachers with a professional readiness repertoire that directly promotes the configuration of their pedagogical ethos. Finally, the transformations recorded in the teacher’s conceptions reveal that SJA acts as a catalyst for continuous reflective practice.

These conclusions must be interpreted in light of certain limitations. First, the situated nature of the study and the sample size (12 students) limit the generalizability of the findings to other contexts. Second, the cross-sectional design of the research prevents evaluating the long-term incidence of these methodological transformations.

Based on these limitations, it is suggested that future research expand the sample to other formative disciplines and utilize longitudinal designs to evaluate the sustainability of these practices. Finally, it is necessary to explore how these fair assessment models influence professional teaching practice once the participants enter the school system.