Social Representations of Implementing Self-Assessment for Training French Language Teaching Students at the University of Tehran

In today's educational world, assessment is not used as an instrument for assessing students' learning at the end of a course, but as an instrument used for orienting teaching and learning during a course. Self-assessment is an assessment technique that encourages students to reflect on their learning, develop practical learning strategies, and discover ways of compensating their learning problems. This study focuses on the social representations of the implementation of self-assessment in masters’ level French Language-Teaching seminars to investigate whether it promotes improvements in students’ learning and skills. Two groups of master’s students,, each composed of 12 students were selected. The first group (the control group) was assessed by the instructor, whereas in the second group (the experimental group), students were responsible for assessing their learning. Students’ overall performance in the two seminars was compared and analyzed at the end of each semester, along with a questionnaire distributed among the experimental group students to examine whether self-assessment enhanced students’ learning, helped develop self-reflection and critical thinking regarding their learning and learning strategies. Results indicated improvements in the experimental group students’ performance, made students more responsible about their learning, improved self-regulation and made them more independent and autonomous in their educational career.