TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL-FUNCTIONAL MODEL OF EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENTS WITH MULTIPLE DISABILITIES1ABSTRACT
The educational assessment of students with multiple disabilities is one of the most complex challenges in contemporary inclusive education. This study examines how assessment is conceptualized and enacted in Chilean Special Education contexts and, on this basis, identifies analytical principles that may contribute to the development of an ecological-functional approach. A qualitative interpretive-hermeneutic design was adopted, combining documentary analysis of national regulatory frameworks with semi-structured interviews and a confirmatory focus group involving 18 technical-pedagogical coordinators from 14 special schools. The analysis was organized across three interconnected levels-normative, institutional, and procedural-and interpreted through quality-of-life domains: independence, participation, and well-being. Findings reveal strong conceptual convergence around comprehensive and contextualized assessment, but uneven operational implementation across schools, as reflected in heterogeneous institutional arrangements, locally constructed procedures, and the absence of shared analytical frameworks. Although many schools already employ practices compatible with ecological perspectives-particularly contextual observation and family participation-these practices often remain insufficiently systematized. Based on the multilevel analysis, the study identifies three interrelated analytical principles that may guide the development of an ecological-functional approach: ecological orientation, shared analytical language, and operational interdisciplinarity. Together, these principles reposition assessment as a situated and collaborative process aimed at understanding functioning, identifying supports, and enhancing participation.
KEYWORDS:
Educational assessment; Multiple disabilities; Ecological-functional approach; Quality of life; Special Education.
RESUMO
A avaliação educacional de estudantes com deficiências múltiplas representa um dos desafios mais complexos da educação inclusiva contemporânea. Este estudo examina como a avaliação é conceitualizada e realizada em contextos chilenos de Educação Especial e, com base nisso, identifica princípios analíticos que podem contribuir para o desenvolvimento de uma abordagem ecológico-funcional. Foi adotado um desenho qualitativo interpretativo-hermenêutico, combinando análise documental de marcos regulatórios nacionais com entrevistas semiestruturadas e um grupo focal confirmatório envolvendo 18 coordenadores técnico-pedagógicos de 14 escolas especiais. A análise foi organizada em três níveis interconectados - normativo, institucional e procedimental - e interpretada por meio dos domínios de qualidade de vida: independência, participação e bem-estar. Os resultados revelam forte convergência conceitual em torno de uma avaliação abrangente e contextualizada, mas implementação operacional desigual entre as escolas, refletida em arranjos institucionais heterogêneos, procedimentos construídos localmente e ausência de referenciais analíticos compartilhados. Embora muitas escolas já empreguem práticas compatíveis com perspectivas ecológicas - particularmente observação contextual e participação da família -, essas práticas frequentemente permanecem insuficientemente sistematizadas. Com base na análise multinível, o estudo identifica três princípios analíticos interrelacionados que podem orientar o desenvolvimento de uma abordagem ecológico-funcional: orientação ecológica, linguagem analítica compartilhada e interdisciplinaridade operacional. Em conjunto, esses princípios reposicionam a avaliação como um processo situado e colaborativo voltado a compreender o funcionamento, identificar apoios e ampliar a participação.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Avaliação educacional; Deficiências múltiplas; Abordagem ecológico-funcional; Qualidade de vida; Educação Especial.
1 INTRODUCTION
In contemporary education systems, the assessment of students with multiple disabilities represents one of the most complex and ethically sensitive challenges in Special Education. This complexity stems both from the diversity of support needs involved and from persistent tensions between inclusive policy frameworks and everyday school assessment practices. In Latin America, and particularly in Chile, processes aimed at understanding the functioning of students with multiple disabilities continue to face significant epistemological and structural constraints.
These conditions often reproduce a clinical orientation toward assessment and limit the development of more comprehensive interpretations of students’ learning trajectories (Muñoz Quezada & Lucero Mondaca, 2011; Westermeier Abusleme & Tenorio Eitel, 2018). Despite policy advances toward inclusive education, assessment practices frequently remain anchored in deficit-oriented frameworks that fragment information across disciplines and overlook the contextual conditions that shape participation and learning (Fonsfria et al., 2022; Lyons & Cassebohm, 2011; Salas González & Muñoz Quezada, 2017).
Multiple disabilities - particularly in cases of profound intellectual and multiple disabilities - are typically characterized by the coexistence of cognitive, motor, and sensory limitations requiring generalized supports across different life domains (Secretaría de Educación del Gobierno del Estado de Yucatán [SEGEY], 2021; Wehmeyer, 2014). For this population, a growing body of research has questioned the epistemological adequacy of standardized psychometric assessments. Many instruments rely on sensorimotor prerequisites that distort interpretations of students’ actual abilities and functioning (Nakken & Vlaskamp, 2007; Narayan & Bruce, 2006; Narayan et al., 2010; Venn, 2004). As a result, diagnostic profiles often fail to capture the relational and contextual nature of learning processes, potentially leading to pedagogical decisions that are poorly aligned with students’ capacities and support needs.
These limitations have led scholars to advocate for assessment approaches grounded in situated and functional perspectives. Rather than relying exclusively on normative measurement, these approaches emphasize functional observation, family interviews, and ecological records that document how students communicate, learn, and participate in everyday environments (Rönnberg & Borg, 2001). From this standpoint, assessment shifts from a classificatory mechanism to an interpretive process aimed at understanding how individuals interact with and make meaning within natural learning contexts (Hunt et al., 2012; Lyons & Cassebohm, 2011; Wessels et al., 2021).
The importance of this discussion becomes clearer when considering the magnitude of disability worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1.3 billion people live with significant disabilities, many of whom require continuous support across different aspects of daily life (WHO, 2022). In Chile, approximately 10% of children with disabilities have severe conditions, while 96.7% attend educational institutions (Assael et al., 2023). These figures illustrate the scale of the educational challenge and the need for assessment frameworks capable of informing pedagogical decision-making.
Recent literature increasingly converges around the idea that transformative assessment practices move beyond standardized measurement toward situated interpretations of participation and learning processes (Işıtan Kılıç & Şafak, 2023; Wessels et al., 2021). Programs designed for students with severe disabilities show greater educational relevance when supports are developed within authentic learning environments and oriented toward meaningful competencies (Dymond et al., 2018). Complementary research has also highlighted the value of observational and participatory assessment tools that document interactions and behaviors in natural settings, providing ecologically valid information about children’s functioning and family dynamics (Palmer et al., 2021).
Within this perspective, several authors have emphasized the need to consider educational assessment as a multilevel process shaped by interactions among policy frameworks, institutional arrangements, and situated pedagogical practices. Coherent assessment systems require articulation across macro, meso, and micro levels, integrating school culture, pedagogical management, and family participation (Maisto et al., 2025). Similarly, Aldabas (2020) highlights the role of teacher preparation and professional experience in shaping inclusive practices for students with severe or multiple disabilities.
From a functional-educational perspective, assessment focuses on identifying students’ abilities, meaningful contexts, and opportunities for participation across everyday environments. This approach aligns with the supports and self-determination paradigm (Shogren et al., 2017), which shifts attention from clinical diagnosis to a pedagogical interpretation of human functioning. Within this paradigm, assessment is understood as a dynamic process that interprets the interaction among individual competencies, environmental supports, and contextual demands in order to promote autonomy, participation, and quality of life.
Parallel contributions by Petry et al. (2005, 2009, 2016) suggest that organizing assessment around the domains of independence, participation, and well-being can facilitate interdisciplinary communication and support planning by providing a shared conceptual framework. Similarly, dialogical observation of idiosyncratic behaviors - such as gestures, postures, or vocalizations - has been shown to broaden communicative understanding and support shared interpretations among professionals and families (Hostyn et al., 2009).
Despite these theoretical advances, important challenges remain at the policy level. In Chile, Supreme Decree No. 170 (Decreto n° 170, de 14 de mayo de 2009) recognizes multiple disabilities and deafblindness within the Special Education system but provides limited operational guidance on how assessment results should inform pedagogical decision-making. Consequently, assessment practices often rely on fragmented reports produced by medical, psychological, and psycho-pedagogical professionals that do not converge within a coherent interpretive framework.
Progress toward more integrative approaches therefore requires recognizing the complexity of human functioning while adapting assessment procedures to atypical developmental trajectories (Putten et al., 2017; Wessels et al., 2021). It also demands sustained interprofessional collaboration and ongoing teacher development as conditions for ensuring both evaluative rigor and ethical responsibility in educational decision-making (Aldabas, 2020).
Within this context, this study seeks to contribute to the theoretical discussion on educational assessment in the context of multiple disabilities by articulating documentary analysis and empirical evidence from school professionals through a multilevel interpretive framework. By examining assessment practices across normative, institutional, and procedural levels, the study identifies analytical elements that may inform the development of an ecological-functional perspective on educational assessment.
In doing so, the study contributes to ongoing debates on inclusive assessment by offering an analytically grounded interpretation of how ecological-functional perspectives may emerge within real education systems. Rather than introducing a prescriptive model, the research identifies structural conditions and interpretive principles that may support the development of more coherent and context-sensitive assessment practices.
Accordingly, the study examines how educational assessment practices for students with multiple disabilities are configured within the Chilean education system and explores the normative, institutional, and procedural conditions that shape these practices. The research is guided by the following question: How are educational assessment practices for students with multiple disabilities configured within the Chilean education system, and what normative, institutional, and procedural conditions may support progress toward an ecological-functional approach to assessment?
By addressing this question, the study contributes to the emerging discussion on ecological-functional assessment by integrating policy analysis with empirical evidence from school professionals. This integration makes it possible to examine how assessment frameworks are translated into institutional practices and to identify analytical principles that may inform the development of more coherent and context-sensitive assessment approaches.
2 METHOD
This study adopted a qualitative interpretive-constructivist design to understand how technical-pedagogical teams conceptualize and implement educational assessment for students with multiple disabilities in school contexts. Rather than measuring outcomes, the study focused on how professionals construct meaning around assessment practices shaped by policy frameworks, institutional arrangements, and pedagogical decision-making.
The analysis was organized across three interrelated analytical planes: normative, institutional, and procedural. These correspond to the macro, meso, and micro levels commonly described in ecological approaches. These levels served as an interpretive framework for examining how assessment practices are shaped by the interaction among policy orientations, school organization, and situated pedagogical action.
Within each analytical plane, the research examined how educational assessment is conceptually framed, how it is operationalized in practice, and what tensions emerge between normative expectations and pedagogical realities. Accordingly, the methodological strategy integrated three analytical movements: documentary analysis of normative frameworks, interpretive analysis of professional discourses, and triangulation across data sources.
Based on this structure, the study unfolded in two analytically interconnected phases: a documentary phase and an empirical phase. This design made it possible to contrast normative expectations with professional interpretations of assessment practices, strengthening the analytical depth of the findings through the integration of policy analysis and empirical perspectives.
2.1 PHASE 1: DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS
The first phase consisted of a systematic review of official documents regulating or guiding the assessment of students with multiple disabilities within the Chilean education system. The objective was to identify the conceptual orientations and assessment principles expressed in national regulations and examine how they relate to contemporary inclusive and functional approaches to educational assessment.
The documentary analysis examined both external characteristics of the texts - origin, legal validity, and institutional applicability - and their internal content, including language, conceptualizations of disability, and epistemological orientations. Documents were retrieved from official repositories of the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC), the National Disability Service [Servicio Nacional de la Discapacidad - SENADIS], and the Superintendency of Education.
Of the four documents initially identified, two met the inclusion criteria by providing explicit guidance on assessment processes for students with multiple disabilities: Supreme Decree No. 170/2009 (2010), which establishes eligibility criteria for Special Education subsidies, and the Guidelines for Schools Educating Students with Multiple Disabilities and Deafblindness (Ministerio de Educación, 2019). These documents constituted the normative corpus of analysis and were systematized in a documentary matrix that included year of publication, issuing institution, regulatory scope, and relevant content concerning educational assessment.
Normative paragraphs referring to assessment procedures, criteria, or professional responsibilities were treated as units of analysis. Importantly, the documentary review used the same analytical categories later applied to interview and focus group data, enabling direct comparison between how assessment practices are framed in policy documents and how they are interpreted and enacted by technical-pedagogical teams in schools. This shared analytical framework facilitated triangulation between normative discourse and professional practice.
2.2 PHASE 2: FIELDWORK
The second phase explored how the normative orientations identified in the documentary review were interpreted and implemented in everyday school practices. Fourteen special schools across eight regions of Chile were selected through purposive sampling. Participants were required to hold the position of technical-pedagogical coordinator and to have at least three consecutive years of experience in that role.
A total of 18 professionals participated: 14 in individual interviews and 4 in a concluding focus group. All participants had direct responsibility for coordinating educational assessment processes for students with multiple disabilities within their institutions.
Interviews were conducted between 2021 and 2023 using a semi-structured protocol addressing participants’ conceptions of assessment, procedures implemented in schools, and criteria guiding pedagogical decisions. The interview guide was reviewed by three external experts - two specialists in Special Education and one specialist in educational assessment - who evaluated its clarity, coherence, and relevance. Minor adjustments were made following this review.
Each interview lasted approximately 50 minutes and was conducted virtually via Zoom or Google Meet due to the geographical dispersion of participating schools and public health restrictions. All sessions were audio-recorded with informed consent and transcribed verbatim.
The focus group, conducted in 2023, served a confirmatory purpose. Participants were presented with a preliminary synthesis of emerging findings and invited to discuss and validate the interpretations through collective reflection. This functioned as a form of member checking and strengthened the credibility of the analysis.
2.3 DATA ANALYSIS
Data were analyzed through thematic content analysis supported by ATLAS.ti v7.5 to ensure traceability among codes, memos, and analytical categories. Coding followed an iterative process rather than a strictly linear sequence.
In the initial stage, open coding identified units of meaning related to participants’ conceptions, procedures, and decision-making criteria concerning educational assessment. Axial coding subsequently grouped these units into broader categories capturing recurring patterns across interviews. Finally, selective coding organized these categories into an analytical structure that allowed interpretation across normative, institutional, and procedural dimensions.
Triangulation across data sources considered convergence when at least two sources-documents, interviews, or focus group discussions - expressed similar meanings, and divergence when tensions emerged between regulatory frameworks and professional practices.
Interpretation of the findings was subsequently organized in relation to the quality-of-life domains of independence, participation, and well-being proposed by Petry et al. (2016), which functioned as second-order interpretive axes for examining how technical-pedagogical teams conceptualize educational supports and pedagogical decision-making.
To strengthen analytical reliability, 30% of the empirical corpus was independently coded by two researchers. The interrater agreement coefficient, Cohen’s kappa = .84, indicated a high level of coding reliability. Discrepancies were resolved through consensus discussions and refinement of coding definitions.
2.4 CRITERIA OF SCIENTIFIC AND ETHICAL RIGOR
The study followed widely recognized qualitative research criteria: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Shenton, 2004).
Credibility was strengthened through triangulation of documentary analysis, interviews, and the confirmatory focus group, as well as through member checking during the focus group session. Peer review within the research team contributed to refining analytical categories and interpretations.
Transferability was supported through detailed descriptions of institutional contexts, participant profiles, and regional diversity within the sample. Dependability was reinforced through systematic documentation of the analytical process, including research logs, coding manuals, and software-generated records from ATLAS.ti.
Confirmability was ensured through internal auditing of analytical categories and cross-verification of coding procedures. Analytical decisions were discussed iteratively within the research team to ensure that interpretations remained grounded in the empirical material.
All participants provided informed consent before the interviews. Participation was voluntary, anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed, and no economic incentives were provided. The study adhered to the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association, 2013) and followed the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) guidelines for qualitative research (Tong et al., 2007).
2.5 METHODOLOGICAL SYNTHESIS AND LIMITATIONS
The methodological design integrated a documentary phase defining the normative framework, an empirical phase examining professional interpretations of assessment practices, and an interpretive phase combining both sources within a multilevel understanding of educational assessment.
Rather than representing a strictly linear sequence, this trajectory functioned as a recursive dialogue between normative frameworks and professional experience, allowing reconstruction of assessment practices across normative (macro), institutional (meso), and procedural (micro) levels within the Chilean education system.
One limitation of the study was the absence of direct ecological observation of classroom practices. This decision was consistent with the interpretive focus of the research, which prioritized the perspectives of technical-pedagogical coordinators responsible for assessment processes. Future studies may complement these findings through direct ecological observation in classroom and family contexts.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
From a hermeneutic perspective, the findings are interpreted as analytical constructions of situated meanings co-constructed through the interaction among normative frameworks, institutional arrangements, and the professional experience of school actors, as expressed in documentary sources, interviews with technical-pedagogical coordinators, and focus group discussions. The integration of documentary review, interviews, and focus group data made it possible to examine how educational assessment practices for students with multiple disabilities are configured across three interrelated analytical levels: normative, institutional, and procedural. The results are presented according to these three levels, making it possible to examine both conceptual convergences and operational tensions shaping assessment practices.
3.1 NORMATIVE LEVEL: COMPREHENSIVENESS AS A DECLARED PRINCIPLE
The documentary analysis showed that initial assessment occupies a central place within the official regulations and guidance governing educational support for students with multiple disabilities in Chile. The documents reviewed present assessment not only as an administrative or diagnostic requirement, but also as a process intended to identify students’ needs, contextual conditions, and opportunities for participation. In particular, ministerial guidance emphasizes natural interaction contexts, family dynamics, and students’ developmental and communicative characteristics.
At this level, the principle of comprehensiveness is clearly established. Normative discourse values contextualized assessment, attention to students’ individuality, and the need to move beyond isolated formal testing. In this sense, the documentary corpus - composed mainly of ministerial regulations, technical guidelines, and policy documents related to inclusive educational support in Chile - is broadly consistent with ecological-functional approaches.
3.2 INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL: HOW SCHOOLS INTERPRET AND ORGANIZE ASSESSMENT
Interview and focus group data revealed broad agreement between the principles articulated in ministerial documents and the meanings attributed to assessment by technical- pedagogical coordinators. Across cases, participants described assessment as a necessary process for understanding students in relation to their everyday environments and for informing subsequent pedagogical support. As one coordinator stated, “Observation should occur in the spaces where the student expresses themselves as they truly are” (Interviewee 2).
At the institutional level, assessment is understood not as a single event or isolated instrument, but as a process of assembling and interpreting information from multiple sources. Participants referred to contextual observation, clinical records, previous pedagogical reports, conversations with families, and interdisciplinary exchanges. In several cases, coordinators explained that assessment processes involve the participation of multiple professionals - including teachers, psychologists, speech therapists, and other specialists - who jointly contribute information about students’ communicative, cognitive, and functional development in order to identify appropriate pedagogical supports. As one participant explained, “the initial evaluation involves the psychologist, the speech therapist, the occupational therapist, and the teacher, each contributing information about the student’s development and support needs.” This suggests that schools tend to value assessment as a functional and pedagogically oriented process rather than as a narrowly classificatory one.
However, this understanding is not always supported by stable internal structures. Schools often organize assessment through heterogeneous arrangements that depend on local resources, professional experience, and available coordination mechanisms. As one coordinator noted, “how assessment is organized depends a lot on the team and the resources available in each school.” In some cases, participants described regular internal exchanges among teachers and specialists; in others, the integration of information appeared more fragmented and reliant on individual initiative. Across settings, participants referred to the absence of common recording criteria, unified protocols, or shared structures for synthesizing information across roles and disciplines. One coordinator illustrated this difficulty by noting that “each professional gathers information from their area, but there is not always a shared system to integrate those observations into a single evaluation.”
Evidence from broader analyses of inclusive education practices in Chile suggests that this heterogeneity is not unique to the institutions included in the present study. Research has indicated that schools frequently operate with diverse internal arrangements for organizing assessment processes, often shaped by institutional capacities, professional trajectories, and locally available resources. In this sense, the empirical material analyzed in the present study reflects patterns that have also been identified in national reports and studies on inclusive educational support systems.
This institutional heterogeneity constitutes one of the central tensions identified in the study. Schools may adhere to similar principles of contextualized and comprehensive assessment, yet differ substantially in how those principles are operationalized through organizational routines, interdisciplinary communication, and internal decision-making. The issue, therefore, is not simply whether schools value comprehensive assessment, but whether they have sufficiently shared institutional mechanisms to sustain it.
3.3 PROCEDURAL LEVEL: ASSESSMENT ACTIONS AND ECOLOGICAL READING IN PRACTICE
At the procedural level, assessment takes shape through the strategies schools use to gather, interpret, and mobilize information about students and the contexts in which participation occurs. Here, documentary and empirical data converge in highlighting two recurrent practices: situated observation and family interviews.
Participants repeatedly described observation as their primary assessment strategy, generally complemented by information provided by families and previous professional records. One participant stated, “What matters is to see what the child does in their everyday environment, not in a test that disconnects them from reality” (Interviewee 4). This emphasis on contextual observation was echoed by other participants, who stressed that evaluation must occur in the environments where students actually participate. As one coordinator explained, “the evaluation of these students has to be done in situ, observing directly what they do in their everyday context.” These descriptions indicate that many schools already work with procedures compatible with ecological-functional perspectives.
This procedural orientation is consistent with broader findings reported in recent analyses of inclusive assessment practices in Chile, which highlight the central role of contextual observation and family consultation in the evaluation of students with complex support needs.
The findings show that assessment often begins with an initial evaluative moment aimed at identifying students’ forms of communication, participation, routines, and support needs. This is then followed by continued observation and by the use of locally adapted tools, checklists, descriptive records, or interdisciplinary notes. In several cases, participants described the use of observation scales and records developed within the school to document student functioning across domains such as communication, interaction, and daily activities. As one coordinator explained, “we usually work with observation scales where we record whether the skill is achieved, emerging, or not yet achieved across different areas of development.” In this respect, schools do not rely exclusively on standardized instruments; rather, they attempt to construct a situated understanding of functioning through ongoing engagement with students’ everyday lives. This finding suggests an important strength in current practices. Schools recognize the value of observing students in real situations, documenting what they can do under particular conditions, and incorporating family knowledge into the interpretation of performance and support needs.
At the same time, these practices frequently remain under-systematized. In many cases, observations are recorded as descriptive narratives without shared analytical criteria or explicit structures for connecting observed behaviors, contextual factors, and pedagogical decisions. As a result, schools often produce rich qualitative information, but that information is not always easily comparable, transferable, or synthesized across professionals and cases. One participant described this situation by noting that “we gather a lot of information about the student, but sometimes each professional keeps their own records and there is not always a clear structure to connect those observations.”
A recurring limitation concerns the scope of interpretation. Much of the documented information focuses on visible aspects of functioning - such as mobility, communication, task engagement, or participation in routines - while less frequently incorporating environmental, emotional, and interactional dimensions that would help explain why a given behavior emerges under certain circumstances and not others. In other words, schools often record what students do, but less consistently analyze how contextual conditions shape participation.
This limitation is not simply technical. As Hostyn et al. (2009) suggest, assessment involving individuals with profound multiple disabilities demands a dialogical reading of idiosyncratic expressions - gazes, gestures, vocalizations, body postures, and rhythms - that standardized instruments rarely capture adequately. When observation remains only descriptive, communicative intentionality and emotional experience risk being reduced to a list of behaviors. In contrast, ecological reading implies interpreting how the environment conditions participation and well-being, a perspective that resonates with what Petry et al. (2016) describe as contextualized quality-of-life indicators.
Taken together, the procedural findings reveal both progress and limitations. Schools do engage in contextualized and meaningful observation, but they often do so without a sufficiently shared structure for connecting observed capacities, contextual conditions, and pedagogical support decisions.
3.4 CONVERGENCES AND TENSIONS ACROSS LEVELS
When the three analytical levels are considered together, the findings reveal a pattern of strong conceptual convergence combined with uneven operational implementation.
These convergences show that ecological-functional principles are not foreign to current educational practice. On the contrary, they are already present - at least partially - in ministerial discourse, institutional reasoning, and many of the actions carried out by schools. Similar patterns have been observed in broader studies of inclusive education practices in Chile. In the empirical material analyzed in this study, participants consistently emphasized the importance of observing students in their everyday contexts and integrating information from families and interdisciplinary teams when interpreting student functioning.
Tensions emerge when these principles must be translated into shared and methodologically coherent procedures. At the normative level, the regulatory framework endorses contextualized and interdisciplinary assessment but does not fully specify how information should be organized, integrated, or converted into pedagogical decisions. At the institutional level, schools value comprehensive assessment but differ in the internal structures through which it is coordinated. At the procedural level, teachers and coordinators engage in contextualized observation and family consultation, but frequently without a sufficiently explicit analytical framework for interpretation and synthesis.
This multilevel reading suggests that the main challenge is not a contradiction between policy and practice, but rather a tension between conceptual agreement and operational capacity.
3.5 TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL-FUNCTIONAL APPROACH TO EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT
One of the clearest themes emerging from the empirical phase was coordinators’ repeated emphasis on the need for clearer and more coherent frameworks to support educational assessment for students with multiple disabilities. As one participant noted, “It would be fantastic to have a common guideline, but whoever designs it must know what actually happens in schools” (Interviewee 1).
This statement is analytically important because it does not express a demand for more assessment in abstract terms, but rather for a framework capable of organizing what schools already do - often intuitively - into a more shared, systematic, and pedagogically useful structure. In that sense, the data do not support the claim that schools lack relevant assessment practices altogether. Rather, they suggest that existing practices remain dispersed and locally constructed, lacking sufficient articulation within a common interpretive structure. As several participants described, schools frequently collect extensive observational and contextual information about students, yet these data are not always organized through shared analytical procedures that facilitate collective interpretation.
Similar concerns have been identified in broader analyses of inclusive education practices in Chile, where professionals frequently report the need for clearer methodological orientations capable of connecting contextual observation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and pedagogical decision-making in the assessment of students with complex support needs.
Based on the convergences identified across the normative, institutional, and procedural levels of analysis, the findings support the articulation of three interrelated analytical principles that provide an interpretive framework for understanding the patterns identified across the data.
The first is ecological orientation, understood as the need to privilege brief, situated, and repeatable observations conducted in real or naturally reported contexts of participation. This principle is grounded in the recurrent emphasis placed by participants on authenticity, daily routines, and contextual relevance. Several coordinators highlighted that meaningful assessment emerges when teachers observe how students communicate, interact, and participate in everyday school situations rather than through isolated testing situations. This emphasis is consistent with literature highlighting the educational value of natural settings for understanding functioning (Dymond et al., 2018; Rönnberg & Borg, 2001; Wessels et al., 2021).
The second principle concerns the development of a shared analytical language that allows professionals to organize observational information, contextual factors, and pedagogical interpretations within a common conceptual framework.
The third is operational interdisciplinarity, referring to the need for effective coordination among teachers, therapists, and families in order to construct a consensual and pedagogically meaningful functional profile. Family participation was especially visible in this regard. Participants repeatedly described families not as peripheral informants, but as key interlocutors in understanding routines, communication, expectations, and possibilities for support. As one coordinator stated, “If the family doesn’t work with you, it’s impossible to make real progress” (Interviewee 3). This emphasis is consistent with previous studies that recognize families as legitimate co-participants in assessment and support planning (Downing et al., 2018; MontañoContreras et al., 2019).
Taken together, these principles should not be interpreted as a fully validated model mechanically derived from raw data. Rather, they represent an analytical synthesis empirically informed by the study’s multilevel findings and conceptually strengthened through dialogue with specialized literature. Their value lies in offering a more coherent way of understanding how current practices may evolve from a declarative commitment to comprehensiveness toward a more explicit, contextualized, and pedagogically meaningful approach to educational assessment.
From this perspective, assessment ceases to appear primarily as a technical act of classification and becomes a situated process of interpretation aimed at understanding functioning, identifying supports, and enhancing participation. This shift does not invalidate existing school practices; instead, it offers a structure through which those practices may be better organized, interpreted, and connected to inclusive educational purposes.
3.6 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
This study was based on documentary analysis and professional discourses and did not include direct ecological observation of classroom interactions or family environments. The findings should therefore be interpreted as an analysis of normative orientations and professional understandings of assessment rather than as direct observation of all practices enacted in actual contexts.
Even so, the study provides a robust interpretive basis for understanding how educational assessment for students with multiple disabilities is currently configured in the Chilean context and for identifying the conditions that may support more coherent ecological-functional developments. Although the analysis is grounded in the Chilean education system, some of the patterns identified - such as the emphasis on contextual observation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and family participation - may resonate with assessment practices reported in other inclusive education contexts. Its contribution lies less in validating a finished model than in offering an empirically grounded analytical framework that may inform future refinement of assessment practices.
Future research should incorporate applied and longitudinal designs involving direct ecological observation, the development of structured observation protocols, and examination of how contextualized assessment influences support planning, participation, and quality of life. Such studies would make it possible to further test, refine, and translate the present analytical approach into practical tools for schools.
Ultimately, the findings suggest that progress toward more coherent and inclusive forms of educational assessment depends not only on better instruments, but also on the capacity to articulate normative principles, institutional organization, and procedural practice within a shared pedagogical horizon.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This study provides empirical and analytical insights into how educational assessment processes for students with multiple disabilities are currently configured within the Chilean education system. By integrating documentary analysis with the perspectives of technical-pedagogical coordinators, it shows how assessment practices emerge from the interaction among regulatory frameworks, institutional interpretations, and situated pedagogical actions. In this sense, the study reconceptualizes educational assessment not merely as a technical procedure, but as a hermeneutic process aimed at understanding human functioning across personal, relational, and contextual dimensions.
The findings reveal an important convergence between the principles expressed in Chilean education policy and those associated with ecological-functional perspectives on assessment. Official documents emphasize comprehensiveness, contextual understanding, and interdisciplinary collaboration, while professionals working in schools often share similar orientations regarding the importance of observing students in authentic contexts and incorporating family knowledge into assessment processes.
From an epistemological perspective, these findings suggest that assessment for students with multiple disabilities cannot be understood solely as a technical procedure, but rather as an interpretive practice embedded in institutional cultures, professional knowledge, and the relational contexts in which educational decisions are made. At the same time, the study identifies a significant gap between this conceptual orientation and its operational implementation. Although schools broadly endorse inclusive and contextualized principles, the absence of shared conceptual and methodological frameworks often limits their translation into coherent, traceable, and comparable practices.
One of the main contributions of the study lies in highlighting the need to move beyond classificatory approaches to diagnosis and to understand educational assessment as a process of interpreting capacities, relationships, and conditions of participation for pedagogical purposes. The multilevel analysis suggests that progress toward a more coherent ecological- functional orientation depends on the articulation of normative guidance, institutional organization, and procedural practice within a shared interpretive framework.
Based on the convergences identified across the normative, institutional, and procedural levels, the findings also support three complementary lines of development aligned with the quality-of-life domains of independence, participation, and well-being. At the classroom level, assessment may be strengthened through situated observation in authentic learning contexts and its integration into pedagogical documentation. At the school level, the findings highlight the importance of operational interdisciplinarity through collaborative interpretation processes involving teachers, therapists, and families. At the education system level, the study suggests the value of technical reference frameworks that define minimum variables, documentation procedures, and mechanisms that increase traceability while preserving contextual flexibility.
Across these levels, professional development emerges as a central condition for strengthening assessment practices. Competencies in ecological observation, functional interpretation, and interdisciplinary communication may support more consistent and pedagogically meaningful forms of assessment. Family participation also appears as a key element in contextualizing assessment processes and interpreting students’ support needs. Consistent with the hermeneutic orientation of the study, the analytical process also involved reflexivity within the research team, allowing recognition of tensions between normative expectations, institutional realities, and the practical constraints faced by schools.
In summary, educational assessment from an ecological-functional perspective can be understood as a pedagogical and interpretive process aimed at understanding how individuals interact with the contexts in which they participate and learn, rather than classifying them according to predefined diagnostic categories. The analytical framework developed in this study offers an empirically grounded way of interpreting current practices and suggests pathways through which assessment may evolve toward more participatory, traceable, and contextually meaningful forms. Ultimately, strengthening this perspective may contribute to more inclusive and pedagogically responsive educational practices for students with multiple disabilities. These insights may also inform ongoing international discussions on how education systems can align inclusive policies with assessment practices that are pedagogically meaningful and contextually grounded.
Disponibilidade de dados
Todo o conjunto de dados que deu suporte aos resultados deste estudo foi publicado no próprio artigo.
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Editoras responsáveis
Aline Maira da Silva (Editora-chefe)Carmem Lucia Artioli Rolim (Editora associada)
