This work lists the main aspects of the evaluation of learning as proposed by the Brazilian legislation from 1950 to 1996 and its incorporation in professional education as seen at SENAC-São Paulo. The results indicate advances from a technicalist conception of evaluation, in which the students performance is assessed at the end of a study stage and based on knowing how to do, towards a formative conception, during the process of teaching and learning and centered in knowing how to be, how to do and how to behave.
evaluation of learning; professional education; formative evaluation