As life itself: Authentic teaching and evaluation of professional consulting competencies in a psychology course

© 2017 by IGI Global. All rights reserved. The authors present an innovative practice of authentic evaluation of competences carried out in the "teaching and learning strategies" course of the psychology degree. The evaluation proposal central to this course is based on a real, relevant and socializing practice context in which students have to act as counsellors to respond to a high-school teacher's request: to improve a teaching sequence or unit. In order for this authentic project to work and generate a gradual construction of learning, course teachers used a series of evaluation strategies directed at the assessment of both the result and the learning process and aimed at facilitating students' learning self-regulation and teachers' provision of educational help. Results show that students value the processes of formative assessment because they allow them to act in an authentic context. In turn, teachers are highly satisfied with the involvement and quality of the projects.