From habitus to interlearning: An institutional ethnography of evaluative autonomy in primary education in Moquegua, Peru
Keywords:
formative assessment, relational autonomy, institutional ethnography, evaluative interlearning, primary education, pedagogical habitus, MoqueguaAbstract
Formative assessment, enshrined in Peru's National Basic Education Curriculum (CNEB) and regulated by RVM 094-2020-MINEDU, has been widely prescribed in primary classrooms; yet a structural gap persists between its normative mandate and everyday grading practices. This study employed institutional ethnography —with elements of instrumental case study— to examine how 4th- and 5th-grade teachers and students in four public schools in the Moquegua region experience the transition between heteronomous evaluation and relational autonomy. The sample of 18 participants was selected through maximum variation theoretical sampling. Data collection integrated 120 hours of participant observation, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and institutional document analysis, including the DRE Moquegua 2024–2025 Methodological Guides. Analysis followed open, axial, and selective coding, generating 147 initial codes grouped into four main categories: Teacher Evaluative Habitus, the Autonomy Fallacy, Interlearning Praxis, and Evaluative Consciousness. The emergent core category, Evaluative Interlearning as Criterion Resignification, reveals that autonomy operates not as the individual internalization of the criterion but as the relational externalization of error in contexts of high cultural interdependence. Theoretical saturation was reached at the seventh teacher and eighth student. Findings preliminarily suggest that criteria-mediated co-assessment constitutes a necessary for self-regulation in Andean collectivist contexts, challenging canonical assumptions of self-regulated learning theory.
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