Student Assessment Emotions and Subjectification: Pressing Student Narratives

The project investigates how contemporary assessment practices in schools shape students’ experiences, emotions, and sense of self. In a Swedish educational context that, over several decades, has increasingly been characterized by standardized testing, detailed grading criteria, and goal-oriented governance, the project examines how students learn to present themselves and their knowledge in alignment with these demands.

By combining empirical data with philosophy of education and continental philosophy, the project focuses on students’ lived experiences of assessment. Drawing on students’ narratives about tests, grades, and feedback, it explores how norms of performance, efficiency, and self-regulation become internalized, shaping students’ identities, agency, and sense of self-worth.

The project contributes new perspectives on key educational issues such as fairness in grading, the tension between authenticity and conformity, and the impact of assessment on student well-being. By focusing on a Nordic context, it also addresses a gap in Scandinavian research while offering findings of international relevance.

Overall, the project aims to develop a critically informed and humanizing understanding of assessment in education, and to contribute to more ethically attuned assessment practices that support students’ development as agentive and reflective individuals.