Recognition of the other as an ontological basis for assessment in the educational process

The purpose of this study is to bridge the profound gap between the instrumental and reifying practice of educational assessment, which focuses on measuring compliance with standards and ranking students, and the humanistic imperative of unconditionally recognizing the enduring value and dignity of every student as a unique human being. The work explores and justifies the urgent need for profound changes in assessment practices within the educational process, emphasizing the importance of authentic relationships between educators and learners characterized by unconditional acceptance. This necessitates transforming assessment from an act of control into a dialogic act of mutual understanding and developmental support. Scientific novelty lies in the complex synthesis of key philosophical concepts of recognition (G. Hegel, M. Buber, M. M. Bakhtin, E. Levinas, A. Honnet, and P. Ricoeur) and the critique of objectifying epistemology (phenomenology and hermeneutics) to develop a fundamentally different paradigm of evaluation centered on the ethics of responsibility towards others. The main results of the work amount to substantiating the thesis that adequate assessment is possible only on the basis of unconditional recognition of the student’s human dignity, which requires the transformation of the subject-object model of assessment into a subject-subject dialogue, where assessment becomes an act of mutual understanding, hermeneutical sensitivity and development support. The study formulates specific principles of humanized practice (the priority of formative assessment, dialogic, process-oriented, contextual, and ethically responsible feedback), and defines the boundaries of recognition that do not negate academic requirements, but prescribe their presentation as a challenge supported by faith in potential, using the language of respect, which is a practical imperative to overcome the systemic conflict between institutional standardization and the existential logic of recognizing uniqueness.