This report provides a critical-reflective overview on issues arising from a large segment of my teaching experience, beginning in 1982, four years before the publication of the Law on the Education System, and ends, in 2012, with the publication of Decree-Law 137 2nd July. It relates, therefore, to thirty years of professional performance. Since many of these interconnected issues rooted in topics that intertwine and interact, I understood to be appropriate to treat them in a systemic perspective, to set up a holistic view of the issues addressed. In the last thirty years, the face of education in Portugal suffered a high number of metamorphoses. The "doors that April opened” converted the right of everyone to education in a value stated in the new Constitution, and legislated in the Law of the Education System, published in 1986. Since then the time of compulsory schooling widened first to nine years and, more recently, to twelve years. The high-level education institutions mobilized themselves to train the teachers needed to face this new situation and public schools multiplied to accommodate all children and young people. Arranging to face these new requirements, schools found themselves facing several challenges: i) the mass education and the need to find appropriate educative solutions ii) the involvement of communities in education policies in schools; iii) the role of pedagogical management of schools within the new reality, iv) professional training of teachers, within this more demanding educational context. During these thirty years starts the process commonly referred to as "enhanced autonomy" of schools. The out coming problems refer to various narratives and theories of (and about) school and of (and about) the educative system, namely: i) the vision of school and its function, ii) the community in which the school is located and its role iii) organic solutions and pedagogical management of the school; iv) pedagogical supervision and professional development of teachers, centered in schools; v) the role of leadership and the principle of accountability. The path of autonomy and accountability4 that the Portuguese public schools have been doing showed slow and insecure. The publication in 1998 of the Regime of Autonomy Management and Administration of Educational Establishments introduced a multidimensional conception of school, locally grounded in a particular social context and translated into specific educational community, whose autonomy embodied various identity instruments, namely the School Project and the School Rules documents. Autonomy is taken as a way of increasing the quality of educational services provided by schools, i.e. the effectiveness of its action, focusing on the quality of student learning. However, as in all changing processes, education system reform has been advancing and receding. The planned transfer of a significant part of the educational management decisions to the schools has been an irregular process, by the rhythm of different educational policies which reflected in legislation produced.5 The OECD indicators 2012 on education in Portugal, refer to this reality: only 22% of decisions are the responsibility of schools and, between 2003 and 2011, the Portuguese education system has become increasingly centralized, having increased from 50% to 74% the percentage of decisions taken centrally. One knows that any degree of autonomy implies similar degree of accountability. Therefore, the strengthening of school autonomy requires an increased level of accountability, supported not only by an organizational structure, consistent in its choices, but also by determined and knowing leadership. Moreover, autonomy also implies accountability of schools for the results, which also means accountability for the results of their actions, that is, their efficiency and effectiveness. From the analysis of data from PISA 2009 on the relationship between school autonomy, accountability and student performance, the OECD concluded that autonomy and accountability go together. More autonomy to decide curriculum and internal assessments, as well as to allocate resources is factor that tends to be associated with better performance of students, particularly when schools operate within a culture of accountability.6 Required for the agreement of autonomy, the self-evaluation of schools gained legal framework with Law 31/2002, 20th December. This law introduced the requirement of schools to develop and implement, on a permanent basis, self-assessment mechanisms. Self-assessment works as an instrument of accountability, but also, by the diagnosis of weaknesses, as an instrument to make it possible to trigger ways of improvement and promotion of school performance. In other words, self-assessment as regarded as a means to regulate and enhance the quality of teaching and learning, the school climate and the educational results. Since then, many schools have developed, with more or less difficulty, self-assessment internal devices. It is common ground that the quality of service provided by schools is due to a large extent to the quality of their professionals and, very particularly, to teachers, and their work in the classroom. Therefore, rooted in the issue of the schools quality evaluation, several questions arise: i) what are the answers that the education system and schools have been giving, considering the need to ensure and promote the development of teachers’ professionalism? ii) What relationship is there between these responses and the theoretical frameworks of school organization and science education? iii) How to establish and develop, in schools, professional development strategies focused on classroom practice, where the improvement of student learning can effectively take place? iv) How does school leadership reflect in the dynamics of teacher development and in the quality of student learning? Through literature review, we highlight multiple concepts associated with learning processes of school organizations, in seeking solutions to exercise autonomy. Autonomy as an instrument of identity and emancipation, with the power to implement the most appropriate solutions to the problems and able to make the school more equipped to generate better results. Thus autonomy relates to structuring concepts as: effective school, school improvement and effective learning organization. Anchored in these, other concepts emerge: reflective school, shared and distributed leadership, emancipatory supervision, reflective practitioner, action-reflection-action praxis, development of teacher professionalism and professional learning community. From the reflection developed in this report, a few lines of thought stand: i) The way education organizes demand, continuously, collaborative dynamics and holistic solutions, flexible and creative enough to meet the demands of a quality service in the twenty first century; ii) Educational leadership, and in particular the action of the coordinators of middle management structures, should promote emancipatory supervision and bring together, for the common good, individual synergies; iii) The professional development of teachers, assumed in a functional framework for reflection-in-action, tends to focus on schools themselves and their needs to improve processes and outcomes; iii) Teacher interaction, focused on learning and based on dialogical collaborative strategies, enhances the improving of student outcomes. The development of Professional Learning Community (CAP) concept anchors in this kind of practice and has proved a resource for the development of teacher professionalism in schools, in the context of practice. It is, in short, to converge and find appropriate solutions to a range of issues that intercross in school organics. Largely, it is on the degree of professional interschool interaction quality - what Fullan & Hargreaves (2012) call "social capital" - that one can build and improve higher or lower quality of the schools results.
| Date of Award | 21 Jan 2014 |
|---|
| Original language | Portuguese |
|---|
| Awarding Institution | - Universidade Católica Portuguesa
|
|---|
| Supervisor | José Matias Alves (Supervisor) & Vitor Alaiz (Supervisor) |
|---|