Shaking the Assessment Culture – The Workshop and the Initial FEDORAS Assessment Framework

On October 23 and 24, the University of Girona hosted a key milestone in the FEDORAS Teacher Academy. FEDORAS partners from the different European institutions, together with teachers from our Open Schooling Networks, gathered to reflect on one of the project’s central themes: assessment.

The meeting reinforced the importance of aligning assessment with FEDORAS’ ambitions: supporting interdisciplinary and future-oriented learning, strengthening agency, and fostering education that responds to sustainability challenges across diverse learning ecologies.

1. The workshop: building a shared understanding

Part I – Assessment as collective inquiry

The workshop opened with a constructive discussion on what it means to view assessment as a collective inquiry. Using the Initial Assessment Framework as a starting point, participants explored how assessment can help notice and value key aspects of open schooling: interdisciplinary work, competences for acting on socio-environmental challenges, collaboration across actors, and opportunities to imagine and shape more sustainable futures.

Part II – Exploring challenges, dimensions and ways of documenting learning

The second part deepened the conversation in three core areas of the framework. Researchers and teachers examined whether the issues identified in the framework reflected school realities, focusing on three themes that cut across FEDORAS: learning across contexts and disciplines, developing agency for sustainability, and the role of hope and futures thinking in education.

Participants then discussed how to “notice” learning within the epistemic-cognitive, socio-relational, and institutional dimensions, identifying relevant aspects of practice and generative questions for future inquiry.

The session concluded with a reflection on ways of documenting learning: methods, traces and journaling routines that can help follow transformations over time and support shared understanding within and across networks.

2. The Initial Assessment Framework

Shortly after the meeting, the Initial Assessment Framework was finalised, establishing the conceptual and practical foundation for the assessment strand.

The framework defines assessment as a process of collective noticing within broader learning ecologies, built around three interconnected dimensions of assessment: epistemic–cognitive (which contents are developed and learned), socio–relational (which forms of interactions bring this learning alive) and institutional (how lasting structures emerge that consolidate transformation).

These dimensions are framed by seven guiding principles that define the assessment culture envisioned in FEDORAS. Together, they encourage approaching assessment as a collective inquiry; keeping boundaries open across actors and contexts; using multimodal and context-sensitive methods; valuing the diverse processes that unfold across the three dimensions; focusing on learning trajectories beyond the formative–summative divide; placing equity, inclusion and well-being at the centre; and documenting practices to support shared reflection.

The framework also proposes a set of inquiry questions to help OSN members record meaningful learning moments, follow transformations, and share insights across networks within each of the three assessment dimensions.

3. Looking ahead

The Girona workshop and the Initial Assessment Framework mark an important starting point for the assessment work within FEDORAS. Bringing together institutions from different European countries and teachers from diverse contexts has helped establish a shared foundation for a more open, relevant and sustainability-oriented culture of assessment.

In the coming months, the OSNs will begin applying the framework and journaling routine in their local contexts, contributing to assessment practices that support meaningful learning and strengthen the capacity to act in a rapidly changing world.