Educational objectives and large-scale assessments in the trajectory of Brazil’s higher education: Enem, Enade and the cognitive complexity in flow retention

Abstract

This article compares guiding documents and items from two official large-scale assessments targeting higher education in Brazil – Enem, which sorts candidates to university vacancies, and Enade, which assesses students by the end of their undergraduation courses –, from the perspective of the educational objectives proposed in Bloom's Taxonomy, in order to understand what is expected of higher education students or alumnus in terms of their reading proficiency. The matrices and items of the Enem Languages, Codes and their Technologies test and the Enade General Training test are considered. Asymmetries were found both in the comparison between levels of complexity and between normative determinations, and in the items of both assessments, which may be related to the flow retention in higher education.