In this thesis, the results of a survey regarding grade progression between secondary and upper secondary school in a municipality in the north of Sweden serve as the starting point for a study of the experiences and expectations of a number of 16 year old girls who are in the first year of upper secondary school. The study is performed by means of focus group interviews with female pupils from the three largest upper secondary schools in said municipality in an attempt to gauge their experiences of grades, grade assessment, teacher practices and perceived differences in how boys and girls are treated. The results show that most of the girls are disappointed with upper secondary school so far. Many of them feel that secondary school was both more fun and more rewarding in a sense of learning. Their appreciation of how this more rewarding atmosphere affected their grades differed between the various groups. One group considered lower demands in upper secondary school to be a good thing since it made good grades easy to achieve, whereas one of the other two groups considered the lower demands to be demotivating at best.

L'évaluation et la notation des élèves font l'objet de débats actuels dans la communauté éducative (Rey & Feyfant, 2014). Les situations d’évaluation à l’école créent une « pression évaluative » et plusieurs ouvrages rapportent la tension et la peur que les élèves subissent. Les recherches sur le stress scolaire montrent que la détresse concernant les situations évaluatives est vue comme la première cause de l’anxiété et du stress à l’école. Outre les multiples problèmes de santé physique et mentale, ce stress peut produire un impact négatif sur les résultats scolaires.La question principale de notre recherche est : Est-ce que l’évaluation et la notation sont une source de stress chez les élèves et, si oui, perturbe-t-elle leur performance lors de la restitution des connaissances ? Nous avons conduit deux études expérimentales avec 126 élèves de collège en situation scolaire réelle, en faisant appel à des méthodes de la psychologie expérimentale et des neurosciences. Les résultats des deux expériences révèlent que lorsque les élèves de cette âge (11-12 ans) sont notés, ils subissent un stress important. Bien que ce stress n’altère pas la performance de façon majeure, il induit de moindres performances pour les objets les plus difficiles à catégoriser. Quand le temps de réponse est limité, les filles sont plus stressées par la notation que les garçons qui sont très stressés par le temps limité de réponse.Ces résultats posent une vraie question sur les finalités d’une évaluation des connaissances des élèves et jettent le doute sur ce qui est vraiment évalué : les connaissances acquises, ou les capacités des élèves à gérer le stress ? / The discussions on evaluation at school have been topical in the educational and academic community (Rey & Feyfant, 2014). Evaluating settings create a « test results pressure » and many studies report a constant fear which student feel in relation to such a pressure. Previous research reveals that assessments situations are the major source of school anxiety and stress in most western countries. Besides the important health and mental problem, ce stress may produce a negative effect on school results. The research question we try to find the answer is: if evaluations and assessments are a source of stress in young scholar students and if yes, in what way do they interfere with cognitive performance in situations of knowledge restitution.We conducted an experimental study in a real school context (n=126 students). We used the methodology and procedures of experimental psychology and neurosciences. The results of both experiments show that assessment situations are very stressful for the students of this age (11-12 y.o.). Even if the general performance was not much altered by the stress, the number of correct answers on very difficult pictures was inferior under stress. The girls were more stressed by the evaluating context, the boys were more affected by response time constraints. These results raise doubts as to whether an assessment context allows young school children to fully access to their personal resources and to show their real performance. One can doubt what is exactly assessed during evaluation: the true level of acquisition of school knowledge by students or, rather, their capacity to cope with stress induced by the evaluative pressure to perform well.