Fabrizio Butera: The Assessment of Learning: Promises and Paradoxes

Fabrizio Butera: The Assessment of Learning: Promises and Paradoxes

Fabrizio Butera is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Lausanne, and Director of the Social Psychology Laboratory (UNILaPS) of the same University. He is past President of the European Association of Social Psychology, and former Member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research is concerned with the study of social change, from the structural processes founding social influence (power, norms, interdependence) to the cognitive and motivational mechanisms that determine individual change. Within this framework he has studied for example how the type of assessment determines motivation and learning at school, how societal norms intervene in shaping the definition of motivation, how cooperation and competition affect anti-social behavior, and how discrimination in terms of gender and social class emerges from the way the educational system is structured.