Policies that promote Social Justice in Portugal: an analysis of policy measures oriented to curricular improvement.

Author(s):

Marta Sampaio(presenting / submitting)Carlinda Leite

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 03 A, Politics and Policy Making in Education (Part 3)

Paper Session continued from 23 SES 02 A

Time:

2017-08-22

17:15-18:45

Room:

K4.02

Chair:

Xavier Rambla

Contribution

Social justice (Connell, 1995; Crahay, 2000; Dubet, 2008; Rawls, 2003; Santomé, 2013) is essential to achieve a more democratic, fair and successful education (Apple & Beane, 1995; 2013; Leite, 2002). Taking into consideration that school education improvement is a process to optimize student results (Marsh, 1990), social justice (Connell, 1995; Santomé, 2013) is fundamental in the promotion of success for all. The concept of social justice points to an inclusive education and embrace a broad view of equity, opportunity and democratic issues (Ball, 2009), providing a space for dialogue where different interest areas can be pushed together (Vincent, 2003). Having these principles and ideas as a reference, it is important to analyse how social justice has been perceived over the years as well as to understand the influence of policy measures that have been implemented to accomplish a curriculum oriented by these goals.

In Portugal, the Portuguese Educational System Law (LBSE, 1986) establishes that school education must ensure the right to a fair and effective equality of opportunities in school access and in school success. However, the obstacles within effective law implementation may be as diverse as the heterogeneity of each context and each social group. The TEIP programme (Educational Territories of Priority Intervention) and the Schools’ External Evaluation process (SEE) are two different measures that currently influence schools in curriculum organization and on teachers’ pedagogical practices. On the one hand, the TEIP programme was created in the 90’s involving schools linked to social inequality 'problems,' dropout and school failure (Leite, Fernandes & Silva, 2013). These schools joined this programme with the main aim of dealing with these situations by being integrated within intervention projects. This policy measure, which may be considered as compensatory education, emerged associated to other international movements such as: the "Head Start" and "Follow-Through" projects (United States); the Zones d'Education Prioritaire (France); and "Educational Priority Areas" and "Education Action Zones" (England). On the other hand, and since 2006, all Portuguese public schools are subject to the schools external evaluation (SEE) process justified in order to 'promote the progress of learning and student outcomes' (IGEC, 2013) where there are external accountability processes (Fullan, Rincon-Gallardo & Hargreaves, 2015) that cannot be ignored. To accomplish its goals, the SEE process follows a framework – based on the Scottish model “How good is our school”– that is structured around three issues: (1) students results; (2) educational service provision; (3) leadership management and school self-evaluation development.

In this context, the main aim of this research is to understand if the TEIP program and the SEE process follow democratic and equity principles, i.e, if these two policy measures contribute to social justice achievement (Connell, 1995; Crahay, 2000; Dubet, 2008; Rawls, 2003; Santomé, 2013). The study started with mapping how the concept of social justice has been perceived over the years in scientific publications in relationship with curricular and evaluation practices in order to build an analysis grid of 4 case studies.

Method

To achieve the stated goals, the study presented here was developed using two different methodological procedures. In order to analyse how the concept of social justice has been perceived over the years in scientific publications in its relationship with curricular and evaluation practices, a mapping study (Kitchenham, 2010) was carried out focused on scientific publications from Web of Science Core Collection between 1990 and 2016. According to Kitchenham (2010), mapping studies can be used to identify, in literature, the discussion about a certain issue. In other words, a mapping study is a way to identify, evaluate and interpret every research available about a particular subject. The study was developed in different phases that can be grouped into three, namely, planning, conduction and reporting. After these phases, the analysis focused on 217 articles found in 50 scientific journals from South Africa, United States of America, Turkey, United Kingdom and Australia. This process allowed building the field study analysis grid for 4 case studies. After building the study analysis grid, these 4 case studies (Yin, 1994; Thomas, 2011) were performed with the main aim of understanding how, locally, the SEE process and TEIP program are interpreted taking into account their impact for the educational improvement based on curricular and social justice. The schools were selected using criteria that followed different phases. In the first phase, TEIP schools evaluated two times by the SEE process, in different years, were selected. Since the schools’ ranking in Portugal have a wide social visibility - and is, in itself, a different type of school evaluation - it was also collected the positions that TEIP schools had. When this data was put together, from out of the 137 TEIP schools’ that exist in Portugal, the following were selected: (1) two schools best placed in the schools’ ranking and with high classifications in the SEE process; and (2) two schools worst placed in the schools’ ranking and with low classifications in the SEE process. In the second phase, 4 semi directive interviews (Bogdan & Biklen, 1994; Hopf, 2004) were done with the school headmaster, the self-evaluation team coordinator, the TEIP team coordinator and to a student delegate in one of the school management bodies. In total, 16 semi directive interviews were performed. The discourse analysis of the articles and interviews was performed using NVivo (v. 11) software through the process of content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004; Bardin, 2011).

Expected Outcomes

Regarding how the concept of social justice has been perceived over the years in scientific publications in relationship with curricular and evaluation practices, the mapping study shows explicitly that curriculum and evaluation are present in 84 of the 217 publications. In the last decade, curriculum and school evaluation has been the focus of analysis due to several changes that took place at a political level in different countries. The articles analysed highlight these themes and focusing two main issues: education policies that influence schools curricular organization; teachers’ pedagogical practices oriented to inclusion and equity. On the one hand, and taking into account this analysis grid, the 4 case studies shows that TEIP programme and SEE process stimulates the monitoring of educational goals necessary for answering to accountability demands (Bonal, 2003; Afonso, 2009, Fullan, Rincon-Gallardo, & Hargreaves, 2015). Nevertheless, and although the highly ranked schools perceive this as positive, the low ranked ones refer as negative the excessive concern with students’ academic results. This confirms that the changes in schools are a mirror of what occur at a political level and the majority of them are related to the schools need to answer to accountability demands which shapes how curriculum and evaluation practices are developed and implemented. On the other hand, it is also recognized that these policy measures influence positively school leadership and the development of self-assessment processes but have less influence in actions that lead to equity and curricular justice promotion. The attention to students’ social and cultural diversity and the use of strategies that seek the success and educational improvement for all are recognized, though in some of these schools this situation is not yet an institutionalized practice.

References

Afonso, A. J. (2009). Políticas avaliativas e accountability em educação - subsídios para um debate ibero-americano. Sísifo. Revista de Ciências da Educação, 09, pp. 57-70. Apple, M. & Beane, J. (1995). Democratic schools. University of Michigan: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Apple, M. (2013). Sociologia da Educação: Análise Internacional. Porto Alegre: Penso Editora. Bardin, L. (2009). Análise de Conteúdo. Lisboa: Edições 70. Bogdan, R. & Biklen, S. (1994). Investigação Qualitativa em Educação. Porto: Porto Editora. Bonal, X. (2003). The Neoliberal Educational Agenda and the Legitimation Crisis: old and new state strategies. British Journal of Sociology of Education, (24)2, pp. 159-175. Connell, R. (1995). Estabelecendo a diferença: escolas, famílias, e divisão social. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas. Crahay, M. (2000). L’École peut-elle être juste et efficace? De l’égalité des chances et l’égalité des acquis. Revue Française de Pédagogie, Bruxelles, 135, 223-225. Dubet, F. (2008). O que é uma escola justa? A escola das oportunidades. São Paulo: Cortez. Fullan, M., Rincon-Gallardo, S., & Hargreaves, A. (2015). Professional capital as accountability. Education Policy, Analysis Archives, 23(15), pp. 2-22. Hopf, C. (2004). Qualitative Interviews: An Overview. In U. Flick, E. Kardoff & I. Steinke (Eds.) A companion to qualitative research (pp. 203-208). London: Sage Publications. Kitchenham, B. (2010) What's up with software metrics - A preliminary mapping study. Journal of Systems and Software, 83(1), pp. 37-51. Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content Analysis. An Introduction to its Methodology. London: SAGE Publications. Leite, C. (2002). O Currículo e o Multiculturalismo no Sistema Educativo Português. Coimbra: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Leite, C.; Fernandes, P.; Silva, S. M. (2013). O lugar da educação para a cidadania no sistema educativo português: perspetivas de docentes de uma escola TEIP. Educação, 36(1), pp. 35-43. Mainardes, J. & Marcondes, M. (2009).Entrevista com Stephen J. Ball: um diálogo sobre justiça social, pesquisa e política educacional. Educ. Soc., Campinas, 30(106), pp. 303-318. Marsh, J. C. (1990). Managing for total school improvement. In J. Chapman (Ed.) School-Based Decision-Making and Management, (pp. 147-159). Lewes: Falmer Press. Rawls, J. (2003). Justiça como equidade: uma reformulação. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. Santomé, J. T. (2013). Currículo escolar e justiça social: o Cavalo de Troia da Educação. Porto Alegre: Penso. Thomas, G. (2011). How to do your Case Study: A Guide for Students and Researchers. SAGE Publications Inc. Vincent, C. (2003). Social justice, Education and Identity. Routledge. Yin, R. (1994). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Author Information

Marta Sampaio (presenting / submitting)

Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto

Porto

Carlinda Leite

Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal

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