Intermezzo na melhoria

: o papel das lideranças intermédias

Abstract

The present dissertation is about school improvement, referring to schools as organizations, and focusing on the school middle management, as they are, in fact, the “harms” operating or resisting to change in the field, on a daily basis. We began with an overview of the published academic knowledge, starting from the concept of school as an organization and building on it and around it, up to the assessment of school stuckness and its underlying factors. We then detail the current situation in publicly run state schools in Portugal, demonstrating that, despite a suitable governance model and change inducing mechanism being in place, school improvement does not seem to be happening at the expected pace. Lastly, we focused on the middle management’s role, presenting a case-study that took place in three schools, aiming at positioning, empowering and mobilizing, from a management stand point, two different profiles: Department Coordinators and Head Class Coordinators. Evidence points to the importance of training these managers towards a more professional performance, as the risk of not capturing their roles beyond teaching – and not acting on it – leads to resisting change and improvement, not by lack of will, but by need of empowerment.

Date of Award	14 Feb 2014
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rodrigo Melo (Supervisor)