Carrying out a school evaluation from the perspective of learning through graphic organizers

The dominant paradigms in education today are “competence-based pedagogy and digital pedagogy” (EU, Rethinking…, 2020; Joras, 2007).

“The pedagogy of competences is generated by the triumph of cognitive psychology over behaviorist/behaviorist psychology” (Manolescu, 2017). Behavioral psychology has generated in education the model of Pedagogy through Objectives. The basic principle of behavioral psychology was the “black box principle.” According to this principle, we don’t know what happens in the student’s mind when he learns, we know what the teacher tells him, and we see what the student does. If what the student does is consistent with what he has been taught, it means that he has learned.

The Model of Pedagogy through Objectives has led to the operationalization of objectives. MAGER’s technique or “The technique of the three C’s,” which are the basis of operationalization, “has dominated the pedagogical practice in Romania since the ‘70s of the last century and is still present today” (Manolescu, 2005). Operational objectives are expressed with the help of action verbs, which specify the observable and measurable behaviors of students during the resolution of work tasks.

At the basis of the operationalization of the objectives of the lesson is “B. Bloom’s taxonomic model” or “The model of hierarchical classification of educational objectives.” A “Dictionary of Operational Verbs” was even developed for all three domains of B. Bloom’s model.

“Cognitive psychology entered the scene in the 80s of the last century” (Miclea, 2002). Cognitivists challenge the black box principle promoted by behavioral psychology. They say that we know what happens in the student’s mind when he learns.

The basic principles underlying cognitive psychology are the following:

• Learning is achieved by processing information; consequence: attention must be directed to “how to learn”, to cognitive and metacognitive processes, to their specific strategies, to the situational conditions of learning facilitation, to the new roles of the teacher but also of the active student;

• Learning is done in stages. Learning is based on the construction of knowledge (Piaget’s stages of ontogenetic development of the human intellect).

Cognitive psychology has generated the model of the pedagogy of competences, having triumphed since the end of the 80’s. Cognitive psychology has generated the need to move to cognitive education, which “is centered on the development of students’ cognitive processes” (Neacșu, 2024).

The central concept of cognitive pedagogy is competence. Cognitive education looks at what happens in the student’s “black box,” “concerning in particular the procedural and qualitative aspect of knowledge” (Depover & Noël 2000). Cognitive mental processes and their mechanisms become goals and targets of training. “Cognitive education has an interdisciplinary foundation” (Joița, 2003).

The teaching–learning–evaluation triad acquires its own characteristics in the conditions of contemporary education deeply marked by the process of digitization of education. The rapid development of ICT in the coming decades will revolutionise traditional educational processes by radically changing knowledge acquisition models, the role of teachers and trainers, as well as the institutional framework and assessment methods. At the level of European bodies, it has been considered for some time that the ability to navigate complex systems and to find, evaluate, organize, and use relevant information creatively must become crucial. The idea that teachers will increasingly act as managers of learning processes and as trainers was also put forward. Teachers will have access to “Open Educational Resources (OER)” that can be supported in their work and teaching through openly accessible teaching content. The concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) is based on the open access model. According to a recent UNESCO recommendation, “the application of open licenses to educational materials introduces significant opportunities for the creation, access, use, adaptation, redistribution, preservation and quality assurance of these materials in a more efficient way (…) and creating alternative formats…” (UNESCO, 2019).

Students, in turn, will play an increasingly active role in acquiring and sharing knowledge, in creating and disseminating content. “The goal of contemporary education should continue to be to provide students with knowledge in different subjects and disciplines, but also to provide them, in addition, with the digital skills and competencies necessary to navigate the digital world.” In order to achieve this goal, to allow students to better understand and navigate the digitized world in which they live and in which they will live, learning must be recalibrated from the perspective of “the development of computational thinking.”

Learning will undergo significant changes, in the sense that due to the outsourcing of the processing and storage of information to machines “Much of the knowledge that people had to learn by heart and retain on their own can today be stored in digital format and retrieved when needed, in a short time and from almost anywhere.”

Digitalization in the educational landscape opens up new starting points for improving the quality of teaching, learning, and assessment. In terms of assessment, digitalisation provides some starting points for the automatic analysis and evaluation of (then digitalised) learning processes and for their improvement. Through the exploitation of educational data (EDM) and learning analysis methods, algorithms can increasingly take control and management of learning processes. Thus, personalized and highly motivating forms of learning can be developed, and teaching methods can be improved.

Computational thinking is defined as human thinking that “involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior, through the use of fundamental concepts of computer science”. Given the more recent literature, there is less consensus on a coherent definition of computational thinking. However, according to Bocconi et al., definitions in the current literature agree on aspects of “abstraction and generalization, algorithmic thinking, as well as troubleshooting, problem decomposition, and general problem analysis processes” (Bocconi et al., 2016).

“Computer scientists and social scientists have emphasized the importance of implementing computational thinking in school curricula” (Allan et al., 2010), and “this idea is now widely accepted” (Bocconi et al., 2016).

Despite broad agreement among computer scientists and social scientists on its importance, “computational thinking has not yet been implemented in policy frameworks on education in the digital age.” Neither the “New Skills Agenda” (European Commission, 2016), nor the “Digital Education Action Plan” (European Commission, 2018a), nor the “Commission’s DigComp 2.0” (Vuorikari et al., 2016) or “2.1” (Carretero et al., 2017) digital competence frameworks explicitly mention computational thinking. “Most policy documents focus more on digital competence in general” (Juškevičienė & Dagiene, 2018). However, “computational thinking goes beyond the concept of digital competence” (Gómez Chova et al., 2016) and should therefore be treated separately. At the same time, there are indications of a growing interest in computational thinking. For example, “the Commission’s Joint Research Centre has recently published a paper on the topic” (Bocconi et al., 2016), and the latest publication by “the International Association for the Assessment of Educational Performance also explicitly addresses students’ experiences with computational thinking” (Fraillon et al., 2019).

Therefore, computational thinking has received increased attention in recent years. As a complement to “technical” digital skills, computational thinking is a skill that will become even more indispensable for future generations, given the growing role of algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Any educational activity necessarily involves these structural elements that are in a relationship of interdependence. “At the base of school instruction are three main types of activities: teaching, learning and evaluation. … They are in a position of permanent explicit and implicit interaction, of influencing and supporting each other. … they are inseparable, they form an organic unit, they merge into a single act, because they constitute integral and defining parts of one and the same unitary procedural system. … all these actions are put at the service of one and the same common cause – obtaining learning …”.

Regarding the same relationship of interdependence between teaching–learning–evaluation, a great specialist known in the pedagogical literature states that “Together and in full agreement, the three processes – teaching, learning and evaluation – are indispensable for the existence of the educational process. … Naturally… The unity of these processes is the one that must characterize any training situation and regulate the teaching practice. Any attempt to dissolve that relationship can only prejudice the unitary character of the educational process; apart from this attempt, there would cease to be such a process” (Babanski, 1979).

In pre-university education, in the teaching process, “didactic logic is progressively closer to the logic of science” (Neacșu). In modern didactics, “teaching is no longer conceived as an activity of communication, of transmission of knowledge, but as a problem of organization and management of learning processes, through actions of systematic endowment of those who learn with knowledge, of enrichment of their representations and notions, of management of independent activities, of control and evaluation” (Ionescu).

Learning is the student’s activity, an activity that reflects the psychological aspect of the educational process. Learning is always a personal act; it obeys psychological laws, personal subjectivity. And acquisitions through learning are subject to a logic of initiation of those who learn (at least at certain ages) and a logic of improvement, for adulthood. “The evaluation aims to determine the value of the learning outcomes and progress, including the learning processes it explains, to highlight their ‘critical points’, all in order to improve and optimize these activities, to maximize the results”.

From the cognitivist perspective, the student must integrate reality into his own mental schemes, rather than acquiring new observable behaviors as in the case of pedagogy through objectives. This perspective highlights the internal transformation of cognitive structures as the true indicator of learning. As Gavrilă (2015) points out, “Graphic organizers are teaching–learning–assessment tools; when integrated into classroom experiences, they enhance students’ ability to understand new material.” (Gavrilă, 2015). These tools, therefore, align with the cognitive view of learning by facilitating the organization and assimilation of complex information into existing mental frameworks. In this regard, learning is characterized not simply by external performance, but by a bigger change in the internal architecture of knowledge. So, learning is characterized by a change in the mental structures of the student. This idea is further reinforced by the author’s observation, which states that “by creating a clear visual representation, graphic organizers support learning by literally allowing students to see the connections and relationships between facts, information, and terms.” (Gavrilă, 2015). The educational vision that derives from the cognitivist approach emphasizes the active mental commitment of students throughout learning, in order to succeed in processing information in depth.

Thus, the teacher will use teaching strategies aimed at:

• helping the student in selecting and coding the information coming from the environment;

• organizing and integrating information;

• finding the information in the long-term memory.

“The educational approach has, over time, been shaped by the influences of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism, with the main directions of action being determined by macro-social and scientific developments. A shift is necessary from the traditional school paradigm – the behaviorist paradigm – towards a learner-centered paradigm, focused on the development of competencies” (Gavrilă, 2017). The teaching methods favored by the cognitivist approach allow multiple learning paths, taking into account the individual variables that influence the way information is processed. The cognitivist teacher will mainly use the new information and communication technologies that allow great interactivity with the students (intelligent tutorials or computerized simulations).

“From the perspective of constructivism, a paradigm to which we subordinate the present approach of graphic organizers, as pedagogical resources in the educational process, teaching does not consist in transmitting to the student the meanings of another individual who ‘knows’, but in putting the student’s meanings to the test” (Gavrilă, 2017). This implies a shift in the teacher’s role – from authority to facilitator – and places the learner’s mental activity at the center of the instructional process. The focus is thus redirected from knowledge reproduction to knowledge construction, with graphic organizers serving as cognitive mediators that support the personalization and internal negotiation of meaning. Contemporary education is increasingly focused on developing the student’s cognitive structures and thinking skills as a primary objective, rather than simply transmitting information. This shift is rooted in a constructivist vision of learning, which emphasizes active student engagement in meaningful contexts. As Gavrilă observes, “a constructivist vision of education values active and non-directive pedagogy, favoring the real learning context, supporting the student, rather than intervention, directed discovery, encouraging the exploration of different points of view, collaborative learning, and project-based approach” (Gavrilă, 2017). In this paradigm, learning experiences are designed to engage learners in constructing knowledge through interaction and exploration, aligning educational objectives with the demands of a dynamic, knowledge-based society.

Within the constructivist framework, the student is no longer a passive recipient of content but rather an active agent in the learning process. The learner assumes a proactive role – he is “the decision-maker in his knowledge building process, accompanied and supported by the teacher, who has the task of offering him a rich and stimulating learning environment” (Gavrilă, 2017). Knowledge itself is not treated as a fixed commodity delivered by the teacher; instead, “knowledge is open to negotiation and, in this sense, the social context plays a major role in learning. Constructivist learning is a construct of reality, a social construct” (Gavrilă, 2017). In other words, understanding is co-constructed through dialogue and collaboration, meaning that learning is inherently a socio-cognitive activity. The classroom thus becomes a community of inquiry where students actively negotiate meaning, and this social interaction helps shape and reconfigure each student’s mental structures. Implementing this new paradigm of knowledge construction requires a profound change in teaching methodology. Educators are now encouraged to design learning activities that center on the student’s active participation. As one author explains, “a new paradigm of knowledge is equally supported by the methodological motivation of teachers,” which compels teachers to select modern, complex methods that involve students actively in their own learning (Gavrilă, 2017). In practice, this means moving away from traditional lecture-based instruction and adopting strategies that require learners to engage, discuss, investigate, and create.

In a constructivist classroom, the teacher is no longer the sole authority imparting knowledge, but rather a mentor who guides and supports learners’ inquiry. As Gavrilă notes, “the teacher, from a central actor, becomes a facilitator, who guides the student in learning, even as a partner.” Correspondingly, “the student learns starting from his own motivation, learns responsibly, and learns by cooperating, through involvement and personal action” (Gavrilă, 2017). This redefined teacher–student relationship nurtures student motivation and accountability. Students learn how to learn – they set goals, seek out information, and reflect on their understanding with the teacher’s support. The outcome is a more personalized and empowering learning experience: each student actively builds and adjusts their mental models, while the teacher provides feedback, resources, and encouragement along the way.

Within this constructivist and student-centered paradigm, graphic organizers emerge as invaluable cognitive tools that support the development of mental structures. Graphic organizers – such as concept maps, mind maps, Venn diagrams, and flowcharts – are visual frameworks that allow learners to externalize their internal thought processes. By mapping out ideas and their interconnections, students make their thinking visible. This practice helps learners to organize and evaluate their knowledge: they can identify key concepts, see relationships between ideas, and pinpoint gaps or misconceptions in their understanding. Research in cognitive psychology suggests that new information is learned more meaningfully when it can be related to existing knowledge structures. Therefore, “in designing the didactic strategy, the teacher can use a new, current methodological concept, with multiple educational valences, both in teaching, in learning, and in evaluation – graphic organizers” (Gavrilă, 2017).

Graphic organizers facilitate this process by providing a structured visual space for students to link new concepts to their prior knowledge, thereby promoting deeper comprehension and memory retention. In essence, these tools help students reconfigure their mental schemata – as they add new nodes and connections, they are actively restructuring how they conceptualize the subject matter. Graphic organizers also serve an important evaluative function in the learning process. In constructivist pedagogy, assessment is not limited to a final exam or a one-way judgment of performance; instead, it is integrated as an ongoing, formative process that guides both teaching and learning. Gavrilă’s work underlines, “the role of evaluation is to diagnose students’ results and the learning processes, highlighting positive aspects as well as areas to be remedied” (Gavrilă, 2017). In this light, graphic organizers can be used as formative assessment tools: when a student creates a concept map or other organizing tools, the teacher (and the student themselves) gains insight into that student’s current mental structure. For example, a concept map revealing well-connected ideas in some areas but thin links in others provides an objective snapshot of what the learner understands and where misconceptions might lie.

The use of graphic organizers has proven to be a powerful instructional strategy for enhancing students’ cognitive engagement and structuring knowledge in meaningful ways. These tools support not only the organization of information but also the visualization of conceptual relationships, thus stimulating deeper processing of content. In traditional educational settings, teachers tend to rely predominantly on oral exposition, reading, and writing as the primary means of transmitting and expressing knowledge. However, this linear, language-centered approach may limit learners’ ability to internalize and manipulate complex information. Research highlights the added cognitive value of incorporating visual elements into learning, highlighting the fact that by “using graphic organizers is an effective way to get students thinking, visualizing, and arranging their knowledge. In a traditional classroom, most teachers rely on oral exposition, reading and writing to represent and communicate concepts. Studies show that “when students create non-linguistic representations of their knowledge, there is an increase in brain activity” (Gavrilă, 2017). This finding supports the idea that graphic organizers serve not only as pedagogical supports but also as tools that actively engage the learner’s brain in constructing, transforming, and reinforcing mental representations of knowledge.

An essential dimension of modern pedagogy is the development of students’ higher-order thinking skills through structured and reflective learning activities. Among the tools that facilitate this process, graphic organizers play a prominent role by requiring learners to engage in analysis, synthesis, and planning. These tools not only help visualize knowledge but also activate the learner’s cognitive and metacognitive resources. Whether students are constructing a concept map, designing a process diagram, or simply drafting an outline, they must mobilize a range of analytical competencies. As emphasized in the literature, “whether students are creating a concept map, a process diagram, or a simple outline, they need to use analytical skills to clarify relationships, organize their thoughts, and formulate plans or process steps” (Gavrilă, 2017). This process involves identifying key elements, establishing connections between concepts, and arranging information hierarchically or sequentially in order to convey structure and meaning.

Moreover, the act of constructing visual representations contributes significantly to information retention. Cognitive psychology research has consistently shown that externalizing mental models enhances the learner’s ability to encode and retrieve knowledge, especially when visual, spatial, and semantic dimensions are simultaneously activated. The practice of developing such representations fosters not only individual cognitive processing, but also collaborative learning, as students are encouraged to explain, negotiate, and refine their ideas in dialogue with others. As the cited statement continues, “the process of creating representations helps students retain information and develops their ability to convey and exchange ideas in collaborative activities” (Gavrilă, 2017). In this way, graphic organizers serve a dual function: they act as internal scaffolds, supporting the organization of thought, and as external mediators, facilitating communication and the co-construction of meaning within a learning community.

By prompting learners to organize content meaningfully, engage in reflective structuring of knowledge, and share their cognitive pathways with peers, graphic organizers align closely with the aims of twenty-first-century education – fostering autonomy, critical thinking, and dialogic competence. These tools thus transcend their apparent simplicity, emerging as complex pedagogical resources grounded in cognitive science and constructivist theory. Their value lies not merely in what they depict, but in what they stimulate: deeper comprehension, metacognitive regulation, and collaborative epistemic activity.

In the contemporary educational landscape, the emphasis on personalized learning and differentiated instruction has brought renewed attention to the utility of graphic organizers as tools that accommodate diverse cognitive styles and support the structuring of knowledge. Graphic organizers are more than simple visual aids; they function as representations, models, or illustrations designed to visualize information in ways that facilitate cognitive processing and retention. Their format – be it a web, chart, tree diagram, or flowchart – translates abstract content into structured visual forms that help learners grasp complex relationships and systems of meaning. These tools are formally defined as “representations, models or illustrations used to visualize information,” and their pedagogical relevance becomes particularly evident when they are “integrated into learning activities by people who possess a visual learning style” (Gavrilă, 2017). While they provide significant benefits to visual learners, their utility extends to a broad range of learner profiles, due to their capacity to externalize abstract relationships between ideas in a concise and accessible format.

Graphic organizers are extremely effective in emphasizing different types of conceptual relations – equivalence, subordination, and causality – thus fostering both conceptual clarity and analytical thinking. As Gavrilă R.M. notes, “graphic organizers are extremely useful to all categories of people who are trained, because they highlight the relationships between concepts, ideas, factors (relationships can be equivalence, subordination, causal, etc.)” This capacity to visually articulate complex information is particularly advantageous when large volumes of content must be assimilated within short instructional timeframes, or when addressing the cognitive needs of early learners, as they “facilitate the understanding of knowledge when a large amount of information is conveyed in a given period of time, or at young school ages” (Gavrilă, 2017). Consequently, graphic organizers contribute to cognitive economy and epistemic structuring, serving as tools for both instruction and formative evaluation. They represent one of the most coherent expressions of a sociocognitive educational model that values clarity, accessibility, and student agency.

The integration of graphic organizers into the instructional process constitutes a significant pedagogical innovation in the landscape of contemporary didactics, particularly when aligned with the principles of active-participatory teaching approaches. Unlike traditional methods that often rely on passive content transmission and standardized delivery, graphic organizers bring forth a transformative shift in both teaching and learning. Their use implies a reconfiguration of the instructional act – from a unidirectional delivery of knowledge to a dynamic, student-centered interaction where learning becomes both conscious and intrinsically motivated. As Gavrilă (2017) insightfully observes, “the design of an active-participatory didactic approach, with graphic organizers adequately integrated, according to the pedagogical landmarks, in order to obtain the desired results in the classroom, facilitates the students’ understanding and transforms learning into a conscious and motivating act.” This affirmation reflects a deep alignment with current theories of constructivist and socio-cognitive learning, which place the learner’s active involvement and metacognitive processing at the heart of educational success. What really makes the author’s contribution especially valuable is her ability to elevate graphic organizers from the status of supplementary visual aids to that of structuring mechanisms of knowledge, capable of supporting the student in constructing personal meaning from content. Through her vision, graphic organizers become not just facilitators of retention but tools for conceptual transformation. They allow learners to navigate complexity, visualize hierarchical and relational structures, and ultimately, develop coherent mental representations of the topics studied. This pedagogical shift not only enhances comprehension, but also fosters autonomy, reflection, and intellectual engagement – qualities that are increasingly central to twenty-first-century education.

One of the most notable achievements in this theoretical work is her systematic classification of graphic organizers, which offers educators a clear, actionable model for selecting and implementing these tools based on instructional intent and cognitive objectives. According to her typology, “several categories of graphic organizers are identified, depending on the targeted field of action: comparative graphic organizers; sequential graphic organizers; description-type graphic organizers; cause-effect graphic organizers; problem-solution graphic organizers” (Gavrilă, 2017). This categorization is not merely descriptive; it serves a strategic instructional function. By aligning the format of the organizer with the cognitive processes required by the learning task, educators can optimize comprehension and facilitate higher-order thinking. For instance, cause–effect organizers are particularly effective in exploring causal chains in science or history, while problem–solution diagrams help in deconstructing scenarios in real-life decision-making or literary analysis. Moreover, it addresses a critical gap in the literature on instructional design: the lack of clear pedagogical guidance on how and why specific types of graphic organizers should be used to serve distinct educational purposes. Her work stands out for offering not only theoretical clarity but also practical pedagogical tools that can be easily adapted to various curricular contexts. The ability to match graphic organizer types with the learning outcomes desired represents a major innovation, enabling teachers to move beyond generic implementation toward a context-sensitive, evidence-informed practice of visual learning. Her research implicitly affirms the inclusive and adaptive potential of graphic organizers. These tools can be differentiated according to learners’ developmental stages, cognitive styles, and prior knowledge levels, making them powerful instruments for equity and personalization in education. In this regard, the author’s conceptual model resonates with broader educational reforms centered on competency-based learning, universal design for learning (UDL), and formative assessment.

In a more refined and intellectually layered contribution, Gavrilă introduces a second tier of classification, moving beyond the structural typologies of graphic organizers toward an analysis of their cognitive function and instructional purpose. This evolution in her framework underscores not only the diversity of graphic organizers but also their alignment with the mental operations that underlie complex learning. She notes, “frequently, depending on the task pursued, graphic organizers are grouped into four categories, which aim to: Conceptualization; sequencing; cyclicality; hierarchization” (Gavrilă & Nicolae, 2015, p. 16). This conceptual taxonomy is of considerable theoretical significance, as it anchors the design and selection of graphic organizers within a neurocognitive understanding of learning processes, bridging instructional methodology with principles derived from cognitive science. By categorizing graphic organizers based on the nature of mental operations they support, Gavrilă advances the field with a toolset that is flexible, purposeful, and deeply learner-oriented. This classification system does not merely function as a pedagogical reference – it reflects a high-order theoretical synthesis that repositions graphic organizers as structuring agents of thought. In doing so, the author reconceptualizes these tools not just as instructional aids but as sociocognitive constructs – external mediators that shape, guide, and refine the learner’s internal representations. Through their deliberate design and implementation, graphic organizers cultivate metacognitive awareness, reinforce logical reasoning, and help learners identify and internalize abstract relationships between ideas. Their role extends into fostering cognitive self-regulation, allowing students to actively organize and reorganize their knowledge as they progress through stages of understanding. In this respect, the organizer becomes a cognitive artifact – at once visual, interactive, and epistemologically generative.

Even so, one of the most compelling contributions of the author’s work lies in the pedagogical elasticity and instructional versatility she ascribes to graphic organizers. As she affirms, “there are countless possibilities for using graphic organizers” (Gavrilă, 2017), thereby challenging conventional, rigid applications and encouraging teachers to rethink how and when these tools can be integrated into the learning process. She highlights that graphic organizers “can be used at the beginning of a learning unit and then references can be made to them during the course of the unit or they can be used as evaluation tools” (Gavrilă, 2017). This perspective reflects a dual functional logic: graphic organizers serve both as didactic instruments – to activate, structure, and visualize knowledge – and as diagnostic tools for continuous formative evaluation. Their reusability throughout the instructional sequence also supports longitudinal coherence in learning, helping students build upon prior conceptual frameworks while accommodating new content in a visually scaffolded manner. Gavrilă’s operationalization of these categories into practical educational design stands as a landmark moment in pedagogical theory. She emphasizes, “we operationalize the above-mentioned classification, with graphic organizers that can be integrated into the monodisciplinary teaching strategy or in an integrated approach, for primary education” (Gavrilă, 2017). This indicates a methodological maturity and a deep sensitivity to the needs of contemporary classrooms, where teaching strategies must be adaptive, cross-disciplinary, and inclusive of diverse cognitive styles. In addition, her approach is firmly grounded in curricular reality – it responds directly to the structural needs of primary education, a stage in which learners require high levels of conceptual clarity, task orientation, and visual mediation.

Through this multidimensional perspective, the author elevates the status of the graphic organizer from a supplementary material to a core instrument of pedagogical architecture, especially in early education. Her contribution is not only theoretical but also operational, offering teachers concrete, transferable tools embedded in a flexible framework that supports both discipline-specific instruction and integrated, interdisciplinary learning experiences. As such, her work represents a major advancement in the field of instructional design, uniting cognitive theory with classroom practice in a way that is both elegant and empirically grounded. In reshaping how educators conceptualize, select, and apply graphic organizers, Gavrilă redefines the instructional landscape itself – emphasizing clarity, engagement, and learner agency as non-negotiable pillars of quality education.

In general, the strategy expresses the intention to build an evaluative approach for various reasons. Any educational-evaluative strategy begins with the option for a major mode or type of evaluation. The main/essential reason for modern school assessment is to ensure the success of students. The “evaluation strategy” does not yet benefit from a definition that fully covers the complexity of the problem concerned and that captures the accents/trends of modernization often invoked.

As far as we are concerned, we will opt for the meaning proposed in the following definition: “The strategy in educational evaluation represents the responsible deliberative conduct of the evaluator in all aspects and on the entire extent of the evaluation process, as well as the option for the most appropriate and appropriate type/mode of pedagogical evaluation, in the given instructive-educational situation” (Ungureanu, 2002).

In a broad sense, strategy designates a set of coordinated actions in order to achieve a goal. “The strategy is aimed at mastering the actions, ordering them in order to produce an expected result” (Hadji, 1996). In the educational field, the evaluation strategy is a preliminary and indicative approach that prefigures the perspective from which the evaluation will be conceived.

Initial–formative–summative assessments have interdependencies and complementarities. This classification of the strategies/types of evaluation (initial-formative-summative) is based on three composition criteria:

• 1)

  “The quantity and quality of the information or experience that the student must accumulate and that must be evaluated. According to this criterion we distinguish partial evaluation or global evaluation” (Gavrilă, 2017);

• 2)

  “The time axis to which the evaluation relates: at the beginning, during and at the end of the training” (Gavrilă, 2017);

• 3)

  “The reference system for issuing value judgments on the evaluated results: criterion evaluation (based on objectives) or comparative, normative, classificatory evaluation” (Gavrilă, 2017).

“The combination of these three criteria results in three types of strategies that are present in the activity of any teacher – evaluator” (Ion T. Radu, 1999):

• Initial assessment;

• Formative and formative assessment;

• Summative assessment.

The initial evaluation is carried out at the beginning of a training program; it aims, among other things, to identify the conditions under which students can integrate into the learning activity that follows. It is one of the premises for designing and ensuring the success of the respective program. “The initial evaluation is necessary, ensuring the optimal preparation of any instructive-educational program. The initial evaluation mainly fulfills two functions: 1) the diagnostic function; 2) the prognostic function” (Cerghit, 2013; Radu, 2000).

The concept of formative assessment was launched by Scriven in 1967 with the launch of the theoretical debates, but also in the educational action plan of a new concept regarding “the approach to assessment as an activity that must be constantly and operatively integrated throughout the instructional process” (Scriven, 1967). It is that type of evaluation that is carried out throughout a pedagogical approach, “it is frequent in terms of time and its purpose is to remedy the gaps or errors made by the students” (Bloom). “Formative evaluation does not judge and does not classify the student. It compares his performance with a threshold of success established in advance” (Meyer, 2005).

“Formative evaluation is the perfect form of formative evaluation”. It is metacognitive, self-regulating, it relies on the student’s responsibility in the act of learning. The central idea of the formative evaluation consists of the student’s understanding of the importance of representing the goals to be achieved, in the conviction that he himself (and only he) is capable of regulating his learning activity, of regulating/self-regulating/correcting this process.

The summative or “certifying” evaluation is presented in several scenarios, two of which are more important for our approach:

• 1)

  The evaluation is made at the end of a chapter, learning unit, lesson system, semester thesis, etc. In this hypothesis, the evaluative approach is summative, cumulative, but with strong formative valences. The evaluating teacher insists, in such a situation, on remedying the identified deficiencies and dysfunctions;

• 2)

  The final or balance assessment, carried out at the end of a school cycle, of a level of studies, etc. In this case, the teacher can no longer intervene to regulate the educational process that has already produced its effects, but he can intervene to correct, regulate, and eliminate the dysfunctions found in the development of a new program. “From a modern perspective, summative assessment is determined by specific contexts, constructed by all actors – including students, who know the level and characteristics of expectations – and defined according to the criteria established together” (Cerghit, Radu).

Unity and complementarity of evaluation strategies. The unit of initial–continuous evaluation–summative evaluation marks the transition from a traditional model centered on control, to a more efficient one, from the perspective of the ameliorative functions that the act of evaluation fulfills in the teaching activity, from the modern perspective. They are distinguished not so much by the nature of the measurement techniques used or by the criteria for assessing the results found, but, above all, by the way in which the evaluation actions are carried out in relation to the course of the process and by the functions they perform.

In modern educational practice, the integration of graphic organizers into assessment is seen as a key strategy to overcome the drawbacks of stereotyped evaluation methods and to modernize the assessment process. Traditional one-size-fits-all tests often fail to capture the sophisticated skills and competencies required by today’s curricula. By contrast, graphic organizers (GOs) function as “versatile methodological tools that align evaluation with curriculum standards and competency-based learning goals, transforming assessment into a more authentic, participatory, and student-centered process” (Gavrilă, 2017). Used across all stages of school evaluation – initial, formative, and summative – GOs enhance both the pedagogical and evaluative functions of assessment by facilitating deeper understanding, active engagement, and meaningful feedback. In the initial evaluation, graphic organizers serve a clear diagnostic and prognostic role. The teacher begins the instructional cycle with an initial assessment of students’ prior knowledge and skill levels, often using GOs to map out what learners already know and to reveal conceptual gaps or misconceptions. This “cognitive diagnosis establishes an inventory of each student’s developmental level and baseline understanding, enabling educators to identify the causes of any discrepancies in prior knowledge” (Gavrilă, 2017).

Importantly, the initial evaluation also has a predictive (prognostic) function: the results gathered through graphic organizers inform decisions about how to design or adapt the upcoming teaching program and what remedial or enrichment strategies might be needed. In other words, the data from initial graphic-organizer assessments help teachers tailor their approach to the learners’ needs from the outset, “ensuring that the planned curriculum is appropriate for the students’ current level and learning style” (Gavrilă, 2017). Through this diagnostic mapping of knowledge, the initial evaluation fulfills both an orientation function (guiding the direction of teaching) and a prognostic function (forecasting students’ potential development paths), setting a foundation for targeted instruction and subsequent formative assessments. During formative (continuous) evaluation, graphic organizers act as instruments of ongoing regulation, reflection, and feedback within the learning process. Formative evaluation is embedded in each learning activity; it occurs continuously and is centered on learning in progress rather than on final outcomes. By “integrating GOs into everyday classroom tasks, teachers obtain real-time insights into student understanding and skill development” (Gavrilă, 2017). This continuous monitoring has multiple pedagogical benefits. First, it allows immediate feedback and adjustment: as students fill in or construct graphic organizers, teachers can quickly identify strengths and weaknesses in their understanding and provide targeted feedback or hints for improvement.

The use of graphic organizers in formative assessment redefines the very architecture of the evaluative act, transforming it into an analytical and criterial process, as opposed to a purely normative or comparative one. As Gavrilă (2017) insightfully notes, “this approach ensures that assessment is anchored in clearly defined learning objectives and transparent criteria for success, enabling a structured alignment between what is taught, what is learned, and what is assessed.” Unlike traditional summative assessments, which often serve merely to certify performance post-instruction, GO-based formative assessments integrate evaluation seamlessly within the teaching–learning dynamic. Thus, evaluation ceases to be a terminal event and becomes a continuous, recursive, and formative component of instructional design. In this paradigm, assessment is not an external judgment imposed upon the learner, but a dialogical toolone that guides, informs, and refines the learning trajectory in real time.

One of the most significant contributions of graphic organizers to formative assessment lies in their capacity to regulate and adapt instructional strategies. From the educator’s perspective, the use of GOs generates a constant stream of formative data, offering granular insight into students’ cognitive processes. Misconceptions, ambiguities, and learning difficulties emerge visibly as students engage in the construction of visual schemas, enabling the teacher to respond with immediate pedagogical interventions. Gavrilă (2017) emphasizes, “this responsive recalibration of teaching – based on real-time diagnostic cues – functions as a self-regulation mechanism for the didactic act. Instruction becomes flexible, dynamically realigned to address student needs, and targeted to prevent learning breakdowns before they consolidate into persistent gaps.” Graphic organizers play a transformative role in fostering student reflection, autonomy, and metacognitive development. As students externalize and visually organize their knowledge structures, they are not merely performing cognitive tasks, but also engaging in processes of introspection and self-evaluation. The visual mapping of content allows learners to perceive both the coherence and the fragmentation in their understanding – identifying conceptual linkages, missing elements, and hierarchical relationships. This promotes a form of embedded self-assessment, where the learner assumes an active role in diagnosing and correcting their own knowledge configurations. Gavrilă (2017) underscores the metacognitive dimension of such practices, highlighting how “the iterative process of constructing, revising, and elaborating graphic organizers stimulates skills of self-reflection and self-correction.”

Furthermore, empirical evidence supports the assertion that continuous use of GOs facilitates the development of increasingly sophisticated levels of cognitive functioning. Students’ progress from factual recall to conceptual integration, procedural application, and eventually to metacognitive regulation as they engage with organizers that demand analysis, synthesis, and evaluative reasoning. The versatility of GOs allows educators to design tasks that go beyond the simple retrieval of information. They can be structured to assess higher-order cognitive skills – such as critical thinking, comparative analysis, causal inference, categorization, hypothesis testing, and solution generation.

This pedagogical richness is further amplified by the wide array of graphic organizer formats available to teachers, including compare-and-contrast diagrams, sequencing charts, hierarchical maps, and networked concept webs. “Each format can be strategically chosen to assess not only the student’s knowledge base but also their ability to demonstrate practical skills, workplace-related capacities, socio-emotional dispositions, and attitudinal engagement” (Gavrilă, 2017). The deployment of such diverse instruments broadens the evaluative horizon, allowing teachers to appraise students’ full range of competencies – cognitive, procedural, and affective. The formative use of graphic organizers is intrinsically aligned with the principles of competency-based education, which demand that learners demonstrate integrated mastery across knowledge domains, skill sets, and reflective dispositions. This form of assessment prioritizes depth over breadth, process over product, and development over ranking. Graphic organizers thus emerge not only as functional tools of classroom assessment but as epistemological instruments that reshape how knowledge is constructed, mediated, and evaluated within the educational ecosystem.

Traditionally, summative assessments have functioned as terminal evaluations, primarily concerned with certifying what students have learned through standardized tests, written exams, or final projects. However, this conventional model has faced increasing scrutiny for its tendency to privilege rote memorization and isolated recall over deep understanding and meaningful application. Moreover, high-stakes summative assessments often provoke performance anxiety and do not necessarily capture the multidimensional nature of student learning. In response to these limitations, the use of graphic organizers offers a compelling alternative that allows educators to assess not only what students know but also how they understand, organize, and interrelate knowledge across domains. As Gavrilă (2017) highlights, “the use of GOs in summative assessment addresses some of these issues by broadening the evidence of learning to include the structure and depth of students’ understanding.” Rather than focusing solely on discrete, fragmented responses to narrowly defined questions, GO-based summative tasks enable students to present a comprehensive picture of their knowledge structures. Through visual representations such as concept maps, comparative diagrams, and hierarchical schemas, learners can demonstrate mastery over both the content and the cognitive processes that underpin their understanding. This approach resonates with the principles of constructive alignment, wherein assessment tasks are explicitly matched to the learning outcomes and competencies delineated in the curriculum.

Moreover, summative assessment, when conceptualized in continuity with initial and formative evaluations, becomes a cumulative act of synthesis and reflection rather than a disjointed measurement at the end of instruction. Gavrilă (2017) rightly emphasizes that “summative evaluation is most effective when seen in close interdependence with the initial and formative evaluations, rather than as an isolated event.” Graphic organizers are ideally suited to reinforce this pedagogical coherence, as they can be used recursively throughout the learning cycle to scaffold understanding, track progress, and consolidate learning. By the time summative evaluation occurs, students are already familiar with the logic and structure of GO-based activities, thus reducing test anxiety and supporting cognitive engagement.

In this regard, summative tasks involving graphic organizers may require students to synthesize major course concepts, illustrate conceptual relationships, or integrate divergent viewpoints into a coherent framework. For example, rather than responding to isolated multiple-choice questions, students might be tasked with constructing a concept map that links the theoretical paradigms explored during the course or with developing a comparative organizer that contrasts historical events, scientific processes, or literary themes. Such assessments not only test recall but require higher-order thinking skills, including analysis, integration, and abstraction. As Gavrilă (2017) observes, “the integration of graphic organizers into summative strategies allows for the verification and appreciation of a complex body of knowledge and skills according to the curriculum standards and the completed study programme.”

Importantly, this format also facilitates metacognitive engagement, as students must reflect on how different pieces of knowledge interconnect and how best to represent them. By doing so, they engage in self-regulatory behaviors that are essential for lifelong learning. Furthermore, this approach democratizes the evaluative experience, offering multiple entry points for learners with diverse cognitive and communicative styles. It promotes equity by valuing the organization and articulation of thought as much as the correctness of content.

From the educator’s standpoint, graphic organizers used in summative contexts serve a dual function: they not only provide evidence of student proficiency but also generate meaningful feedback that can inform pedagogical practice. Teachers gain insight into how students conceptualize and internalize information, which can guide future instructional decisions. As Gavrilă (2017) aptly notes, the summative graphic organizer serves as a “summative feedback tool that can inform not only final judgments of proficiency but also reflections on the effectiveness of instruction.” In this sense, summative evaluation becomes diagnostic as well, pointing to curricular gaps, instructional blind spots, or misunderstood concepts that may need to be revisited in future iterations of the course. The use of GOs in summative assessment supports a recursive learning model. The data collected at this stage can inform the next cycle of instruction, effectively serving as a bridge to subsequent initial evaluations. This continuous loop – initial, formative, summative, and again initial – reflects the cyclical nature of authentic learning and ensures that evaluation is integrated into the learning process rather than imposed upon it.

We can argue then that the incorporation of graphic organizers into summative evaluation not only reconfigures the mechanics of assessment but also repositions it philosophically. It transforms summative assessment from a terminal checkpoint into a competency-aligned, learner-centered, and diagnostically rich pedagogical event. By promoting coherent knowledge structures, encouraging reflective thinking, reducing test anxiety, and providing actionable feedback, GOs exemplify the very best practices of modern educational assessment. As Gavrilă (2017) succinctly asserts, such tools enable “a certification of learning where the outcome reflects a student’s ability to organize and use knowledge coherently, as advocated by modern pedagogical standards.”