ABSTRACT
The process of constructing meanings, which is carried out by pupils on the contents of schooling, cannot be separated from the process by which they make sense in one way or another of these contents. Pupils do not first of all make sense of the content of learning and then immediately proceed to construct meanings for it. Neither do they construct meanings first of all and then immediately make sense of what they have learnt. Pupils construct certain meanings on the contents in so far as they simultaneously make sense of it. However, the process by which pupils manage to make sense of what they learn is directly linked to the affective and social contexts of learning in schools. If this is true-and it has clear implications for the planning and development of specific teaching and learning activities, then it is even more true, if that is possible, for the planning and development of activities which it is hoped to use to evaluate how meaningful the learning that has taken place is. We have to be aware, when we plan and carry out an evaluation activity (whatever its nature and characteristics that may need to be taken into account), that pupils are also making sense of it, and that this, to a large extent, depends on how
we approach the activity and how we behave as it develops. In other words, we have to be aware that the results of the evaluation depend as much on the meanings which pupils have constructed and which we can foster, as on the sense that they have made of the previous teaching and learning activities and the evaluation activity itself.
