Session Information
23 SES 06 A, Curriculum Policy Reforms and Their Implications (Part 2)
Paper Session continued from 23 SES 05 A, to be continued in 23 SES 07 A
Contribution
Research Question
What the national and the international evaluation reports emphasize about the schools´ evaluation system in Portugal?
Objectives
- To analyse data from national and international evaluation reports;
- To understand how the national and the international reports create impact on the Portuguese schools´ evaluation system.
Theoretical Framework
In the globalization context evaluation, has been recognized as a key tool in education policy reform. By borrowing and lending policies (Steiner-Khamsi, 2012) there is a mindset that implies to respond to the market logic (McNamara & O’Hara, 2009; Smith, 2014). Transnational institutions such as the United Nations (UN), the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the European Union (EU) and other variety of “border-crossing institutions that exert enormous influence on States and citizens around the globe” (Sperling, 2009, p.2) are increasing uniformity in the educational policies (Schwandt, 2009) reflecting it on the evaluation politics. Different European national models for the Schools’ External Evaluation (SEE) aroused based on international evaluation systems (European Commission, EACEA, Eurydice, 2015). Nowadays there are thirty-one education systems in Europe that put their schools under the spotlight through external and internal evaluations, a number which still is increasing (Puhl & Crosier, 2015).
In Portugal, the Law No. 31/2002 of December the 20th defined the Portuguese system of SEE which defends that this process is a formative instrument that evaluates the quality of the schools. The school evaluation process is assured by the Portuguese Inspectorate of Education and Science (IGEC) in collaboration with the Universities and it has, already, two evaluation cycles.
The first Portuguese cycle of SEE (2006-2011) occurred normally and only in some public schools. As the result was considered positive, the process was extended to all national public schools in the second cycle (2012-2017), but with some changes based on the proposals made by the Portuguese Education Council (CNE) and implemented by Inspection, as occurs in other European countries (Ehren & Shakleton, 2016).
The domains evaluated in the scope of the SEE process in the first cycle were five: i) results; ii) educational service performance; iii) organization and school management; iv) leadership and the capacity for self-regulation; v) school improvement. There was also a rating scale with four grades: very good; good; sufficient; insufficient. From the first to the second cycle changes were made and two of them were the adjustment from five to three evaluation domains (removing the school improvement domain and combining the leadership domain and the management domain in one) and switch a four-grade rating scale to a five-grade scale, including the “excellent” classification.
The results of SEE have been published by national and international reports from different organizations. In Portugal, the IGEC has published three reports after the beginning of the SEE second cycle (IGEC, 2013; IGEC, 2015; IGEC, 2016). At the international level, the OECD has produced reports about evaluation (Santiago, et al., 2012; OECD, 2013), general overviews about the education field and in which evaluation it is focused (OECD, 2012; 2015a; OECD, 2016) and an outlook about education policy (OECD, 2015b). The Eurydice makes an overview about evaluation in Europe (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2015).
These national and transnational recommendations are globally recognized and, consequently, create an impact on international and national structural policies, namely on the schools’ external evaluation system.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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