Avaliação escolar e gamificação: estratégia para diminuir a ansiedade de teste

Abstract

Test anxiety is a type of multifocal individual performance anxiety characterized by psychological, physiological, and behavioral reactions towards school assessments. Studies of this construct seek solutions for this situation that occurs at all levels of education. Given this context, gamification presents itself as a strategy that can reduce test anxiety, as its mechanism of use is precisely to promote a positive experience. The research carried out was applied in nature, with exploratory and descriptive objectives, with convergent mixed methods and characterized by a panel of experts, opinion research and action research. To investigate whether test anxiety decreases when using gamified school assessments compared to conventional tests, some instruments were created to support this research. The first of these is also the educational product, the development of a Set of Guidelines for Developing Gamified School Assessments (Game-P), which presents guidance on how teachers can transform conventional assessments into gamified assessments. These guidelines were applied in the development of different gamified assessment models. Based on the construction of these materials, a panel of experts was created for basic education teachers with some knowledge of gamification and an opinion survey for students in Elementary School - Final Years and High School. The objective of these instruments was to present the research proposal and the instruments developed and analyze, based on the opinion of experts and students, whether gamified assessments can reduce test anxiety. In addition, the application of a reduced version of the Test Anxiety Inventory (IAP), collecting information on the occurrence of test anxiety. Action research was also carried out in 8th grade classes at a private school in the Mathematics curricular component. The objective of this stage was to implement all the instruments developed in a real situation, in order to carry out an intervention, analyzing and reflecting on the results obtained. The results indicated that there was an increase of 6 to 8 percentage points in the prevalence of test anxiety, compared to data in the literature, and that the use of gamified assessments has the potential to reduce this condition in basic education students. However, some aspects need to be considered in future research, such as the profile of students, teacher training on the topic and longitudinal effectiveness studies. These results indicate that diverse assessment instruments, such as gamified assessment, can reduce test anxiety and promote a positive, motivating and engaging experience.