Association between Teacher Professional Development and Multiple Assessment Processes: Principals’ Opinion About a MBA Subject.

Author(s):

Esther Hermes Luck(presenting / submitting)Ligia Gomes Elliot Fernando Igor Pinho

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Poster

Session Information

10 SES 04.5 PS, General Poster Session

General Poster Session

Time:

2016-08-24

12:00-13:30

Room:

NM-Concourse Area

Chair:

Rachel Shanks

Contribution

Brazilian educational policies have been aligned with state reforms since 1990, following changes in the global economic context. Educational policies incorporated public management methodologies based on efficiency criteria and strategic planning; in addition this lead to the dissemination of educational reform emphasizing efficacy, accountability, quality, assurance and evaluation. In other words, Brazilian government recognized that quality was a crucial ingredient to country development and modernization, establishing an educational policy based on assessments and evaluations. In this sense, the government implemented an education assessment system as a strong instrument for educational reform, with the intention of guiding and monitoring development as well as reporting on the results achieved. Similarly, this also occurred in many other countries in Europe and North America, starting in the 80’s. This assessment system takes place biannually in public schools of all states in the country. Following this, several states created their own educational assessment systems in order to track local results. The interpretation and test elaboration of large-scale assessments is a very complex task, and due to the multiple uses of the assessment results, teachers need to know more about the process and its methodological grounds in order to discuss and criticize results in a more qualified way. Teachers should not only say: “external evaluations don’t translate all the efforts that schools and teachers made to overcome the barriers that emerge inside and outside the school environment; and also didn’t show all the progress that pupils and schools achieved every year”. This kind of complaint appears when we discuss external assessments and its appropriate use by schools and teachers in our continuing educational program called MBA Entrepreneurial Management, directed at public school principals. This MBA initiated in 2012 as a part of state government policy in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to increase educational quality in teaching and learning in their schools. A triple partnership gave official support to this program: the two state governments, the Federation of Industries of Rio de Janeiro (FIRJAN) and of São Paulo (FIESP) which provided financial support, and the Federal University Fluminense (UFF). The Department of Entrepreneurship and Management from UFF takes the academic responsibility to design and develop the MBA (Costa e Silva, Mariano and Cerqueira, 2013). The main objective is to offer consistent knowledge by connecting management theory constructs and applying this to the schools context. Inicial professional teacher education does not include this kind of knowledge as shown by Gatti (2002) and Lück (2014). To accomplish the MBA’s objective, professors engaged themselves in the daily context of public schools until they felt able to create pedagogical resources for their management, focusing specially on the school principals. This strategy allows to offer new topics suggested by partners or principals,. Therefore, in 2014, the MBA created a new subject called Educational Assessment and School Quality (AVED), which presents and discusses large-scale assessments established by national and local governments. This way, principals can learn methodological foundations and processes to decide which assessments need to be done, and which serve their purposes (Gatti, 2002; GAME, 2011; Moos, 2011; Luckesi, 2012). In addition, teacher professional development became a topic strongly related to multiple evaluation processes (Bellochio, 2004; Cunha, 2004; Moos, 2011; Morgado, 2011; Pacheco, 2004; Roldao, 2005; Sordi, 2009). The present research developed a survey about how school principals perceive AVED objectives and achievements.Three questions were included in the survey: What is the main contribution of AVED to support school principal’s work? What concrete actions could principals take using school assessment results? Do school principals really understand their role in improving teacher professional development by encouraging multiple assessment processes?

Method

The research adopted a methodological approach oriented by objectives to investigate principals’ opinion about AVED subject. Each research question became a category of indicators for the instrument elaboration and respectively focused on: a) the ownership results of school assessment; b) actions about assessment they became able to take; and c) actions about improvement of teacher professional development they became able to undertake. Indicators displayed in charts gave origin to affirmative sentences in order to show a whole picture of AVED's pedagogical content influences. The instrument was firstly submitted to a twofold validation process by a school management specialist to confirm the content and secondly by an evaluation and measurement specialist in order to appraise its sentences technical quality (Elliot; Hildenbrand; Berenger, 2012) was then improved. Its final version contains a selection of 41 affirmative sentences. A five point Likert scale, from totally disagree until totally agree, followed each sentence, so participants marked theirs opinions: TD (totally disagree), D (disagree), Indifferent (I), agree (A) e totally agree (TA). Considering that agree (A) and totally agree (TA) together represent a positive sign, the satisfactory judgement standard accepted by the research was the incidence of at least 75% of positive responses to each instrument item or sentence. A WEB solution software called ‘survey monkey’ collected principals’ opinion. The survey involved 371 public schools’ principals from both states – Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo – and its data was collected upon completion of the said subject offered in the years of 2014 and 2015.

Expected Outcomes

The findings from this research indicate that principals who took AVED subject in the MBA program had assimilated the methodological foundation and processes in which assessment tests and their items are built in a satisfactory level. So principals have an adequate perception of the purpose and the limits of external assessment and of the right way to use the results for establishing good strategies in order to improve teaching and learning quality in theirs schools. Findings show principals’ perception about teacher professional development that can be improved by using multiple evaluation processes both internal and external assessment in a satisfactory way. Findings also demonstrated that principals have consciousness that they play an important role by encouraging teachers' active reflection on career, and the way to reach authority and autonomy in their pedagogical decisions. Findings also reveal that principals feel responsible to give opportunities to their teachers reflecting upon who kind of teacher he/she is and how he/she wants to become in his/her relationship to other colleges. It means that they perceive the importance of teacher identity and the cultural contexts of school he/she belongs in order to understand the relations and possible tensions between them. Further research will be done to evaluate what kind of activities and actions principals really do to encourage teacher professional development in their schools.

References

BELLOCHIO, C.R et al. Profissão docente: algumas dimensões e tendências. Revista do Centro de Educação, Santa Maria: UFSM, v.19, no. 2, 2004. COSTA E SILVA, Fabiane; MARIANO, Sandra R. H.; CERQUEIRA, Joana D’Arc. Formação empreendedora de diretores de escolas. In: Anais do EnANPAD, 37. Rio de Janeiro, 2013, 13 p. Available in: http://www.anpad.org.br/admin/pdf/2013_EnANPAD_EPQ1799.pdf CUNHA, Maria Isabel et al. Autonomia e autoridade em diálogo com a teoria e a prática: o caso da profissão docente.Revista do Centro de Educação, UFSM, v.29, n.2, 4p., 2004. Available in: http://coralx.ufsm.br/revce/revce/2004/02/a1.htm ELLIOT, Ligia Gomes; LÜCK, Esther Hermes. Avaliação educacional e qualidade na escola. Rio de Janeiro: SESI/RJ; UFF, 2014. ELLIOT, Ligia Gomes; HILDENBRAND, Lucí; BERENGER, Mercedes. Questionário. In: ELLIOT, Ligia Gomes (Org.). Instrumentos de avaliação e pesquisa. Rio de Janeiro: WAK, 2012. GATTI, Bernadete. Avaliação educacional no Brasil. EccoS Rev. Cient, UNINOVE, v. 4, n. 1, p.17-41, jul. 2002. GRUPO DE AVALIAÇÃO E MEDIDAS EDUCACIONAIS (GAME). Avaliação externa como instrumento da gestão educacional nos estados – Relatório final. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2011.Available in: http://www.fvc.org.br/pdf/relatorio-avaliacoes-externas.pdf LÜCK, Esther Hermes; PINHO, Fernando. A voz dos professores: contribuições para projetos de formação inicial e continuada de professores. Seminário Estadual da ANPAE-RJ, 4. Niterói, 24 a 26 abril de 2014. 18p. LUCKESI, Cipriano Carlos. Educação, avaliação e inovação – II. Brasília: MEC/INEP, 2012. (Textos para Discussão, 37). MOOS, Leif; JOHANSSON, Olof; DAY, Christopher. How school principals sustain success over time: international perspectives. London: Springer, 2011. (Studies in Educational Leadership, v.14) MORGADO, José Carlos. Identidade e profissionalidade docente: sentidos e (im)possibilidades. Ensaio: aval. pol. publ. Educ., Rio de Janeiro, v. 19, n. 73, p.793-812, out. / dez. 2011. Available in: http://www.scielo.br/pdf/ensaio/v19n73/04.pdf  PACHECO, José Augusto. A (difícil) construção da profissionalidade docente. Revista do Centro de Educação, UFSM, v.29, n.2, 4p.,2004. Available in: http://coralx.ufsm.br/revce/revce/2004/02/a1.htm ROLDÃO, Maria do Céu Neves. Profissionalidade docente em análise – especificidades dos ensinos Superior e não superior. Nuances: estudos sobre educação. Presidente Prudente: UNESP, v. 12, n. 13, p. 105-126, jan./dez. 2005. Available in: http://revista.fct.unesp.br/index.php/Nuances/ article/viewFile/1692/1601 SORDI, Maria Regina L.; LUDKE, Menga. Da avaliação da aprendizagem à avaliação institucional: aprendizagens necessárias. Avaliação, Campinas; Sorocaba, v. 14, n. 2, p. 232-336, jul. 2009. Available in: http://www.scielo.org/applications/scielo-org/php/citedScielo.php?lang=pt &pid=s1414-40772009000200005

Author Information

Esther Hermes Luck (presenting / submitting)

Fundação Euclides da Cunha de Apoio a UFF

NITEROI

Ligia Gomes Elliot

Fundação CESGRANRIO, Brazil

Fernando Igor Pinho

Universidade Federal Fluminense - UFF, Brazil

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