Session Information
23 SES 01 A, Accountability, (In)equality and Social Justice
Paper Session
Contribution
The Portuguese Educational System Law (1986) establishes that school education must ensure the right to a fair and effective equality of opportunities in school access and in school success. However, the obstacles to an effective law implementation may be as diverse as the heterogeneity of each region and each social group. That’s why policies measures associated to the promotion of school success and educational improvement were justified on aspects related to equal opportunities and social justice principles. Thus, we consider relevant: (1) to identify the influence of policy measures that have been implemented to accomplish these objectives and to promote educational improvement; (2) to know the meanings of educational policies implemented in its relationship with legal commitments; and (3) the effects generated by its implementation at social justice level.
In Portugal, the schools’ external evaluation process (SEE) and the TEIP program (in English ETPI - Educational Territories of Priority Intervention) are two different measures that nowadays influence schools at an organizational, pedagogical and curricular levels. On the one hand, the TEIP program was created in the 90’s involving schools linked to social inequality 'problems,' dropout and school failure (Leite, Fernandes & Silva, 2013). These schools joined this program with the main aim of dealing with these situations by being integrated within intervention projects. This policy measure, which may be considered as "compensatory education", has emerged associated to other international movements such as: the "Head Start" and "Follow-Through" projects (United States); the Zones d'Education Prioritaire (France); and "Educational Priority Areas" and "Education Action Zones" (England). On the other hand, and since 2006, all Portuguese public schools are subject to the SEE process justified in order to 'promote the progress of learning and student outcomes'. In conjunction with this goal of overall school and student learning improvement, there is an external accountability process(Afonso, 2009; Fullan et al, 2015) that cannot be ignored. To accomplish its goals, the SEE process follows a framework – based on “How good is our school” model (Clark, 2000) – that is structured around three areas: (1) results, (2) educational service provision and (3) leadership and management.
The SEE process happens in all public schools including those that are integrated in TEIP program. This means that TEIP schools live with the SEE process plus the monitoring process of establishing educational targets which are inherent to this program. In the same way, national and international educational policies have indicated that schools should contribute to the promotion of social justice and equity through processes of curricular justice. If we think about educational improvement or school improvement as the process of optimizing the performance and results of school resources (human, educational, materials) on positive results of their students (Marsh, 1990), we cannot cross out the importance of social and curricular justice. These two concepts are inclusive and embrace a broad view of equity, opportunity and justice issues (Ball, 2009), providing a space for dialogue where different interest areas can be pushed together (Vincent, 2003) to instigate a collaborative work and people co-responsibilization for a broader socio-political intervention project to build a more human, fair and democratic world (Santomé, 2013).
Using these ideas as a reference, this study is developed to understand how the objectives of these two policy measures are being implemented, in particular regarding the conditions that contribute to the needs and characteristics of the diverse social groups present in different school contexts. In this sense, the study aimed to know how schools develop processes searching educational improvement based on curricular and social justice (Connell, 1995; Apple, 2013; Santomé, 2013).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Afonso, A. J. (2009). Políticas avaliativas e accountability em educação - subsídios para um debate ibero-americano. Sísifo. Revista de Ciências da Educação, 09, pp. 57-70. Apple, M. & Beane, J. (1995). Democratic schools. University of Michigan: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Apple, M. (2013). Sociologia da Educação: Análise Internacional. Porto Alegre: Penso Editora. Bardin, L. (2009). Análise de Conteúdo. Lisboa: Edições 70. Bogdan, R. & Biklen, S. (1994). Investigação Qualitativa em Educação. Porto: Porto Editora. Clark, B. (2000). The Quality Initiative in Scottish Schools. Working together to achieve excellence. Retrieved March 5, 2013, from http://www.oei.es/calidade2/paper.PDF. Connell, R. (1995). Estabelecendo a diferença: escolas, famílias, e divisão social. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas. Fullan, M., Rincon-Gallardo, S., & Hargreaves, A. (2015). Professional capital as accountability. Education Policy, Analysis Archives, 23(15), pp. 2-22. Gangnon, Y. (2010). The Case Study as Research Method: A Practical Handbook. Presses de l'Université du Québec. Hopf, C. (2004). Qualitative Interviews: An Overview. In U. Flick, E. Kardoff & I. Steinke (Eds.), A companion to qualitative research (pp. 203-208). London: Sage Publications. Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content Analysis. An Introduction to its Methodology. London: SAGE Publications. Leite, C.; Fernandes, P.; Silva, S. M. (2013). O lugar da educação para a cidadania no sistema educativo português: perspetivas de docentes de uma escola TEIP. Educação, 36(1), pp. 35-43. Mainardes, J. & Marcondes, M. (2009).Entrevista com Stephen J. Ball: um diálogo sobre justiça social, pesquisa e política educacional. Educ. Soc., Campinas, 30(106), pp. 303-318. Marsh, J. C. (1990). Managing for total school improvement. In J. Chapman (Ed), School-Based Decision-Making and Management, (pp. 147-159). Lewes: Falmer Press. Portuguese Educational System Law, 1986 Santomé, J. T. (2013). Currículo escolar e justiça social: o Cavalo de Troia da Educação. Porto Alegre: Penso. Seidman, I. (2013). Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education & The Social Sciences. Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. Thomas, G. (2011). How to do your Case Study: A Guide for Students and Researchers. SAGE Publications Inc. Vincent, C. (2003). Social justice, Education and Identity. Routledge. Yin, R. (1994). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.