Qualidade em educação: contributo para uma hermenêutica do conceito

Once the failure of the universal access to education was recognized, in the promotion of equal opportunities, we are witnessing a shift from the quantitative paradigm to the qualitative paradigm. This change seems to fit a broader movement that affects the State, in most countries. This paper proposes a possible route for a hermeneutics of the concept of Quality in Education in the context of change experienced at the beginning of the XXI Century. To this end, several approaches are mobilized, in particular, the sociological, the economical, the political, and the educational research perspectives. The conceptual model, resulting from the various perspectives, reflects the complexity and the polysemy of the concept.