Developing quality in pre-school education has come to assume a particular relevance in our days. It has been demonstrated that a high quality preschool education can have significant long term effects in various dimensions of a person’s life, including the actual learning of children: improved results during the schooling period, development of more adaptive social behaviors and more productive citizens (Sylva, 1993; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1993). Moreover, as Oliveira-Formosinho (1998) points out, another pressing issue, verified by empirical data from research is that some educators attribute much importance to the observation and evaluation of children and educational contexts in spite of the difficulties faced in the collection of daily information, both in the systematic organization of information, making it difficult to reflection and in evaluation and curriculum development.

In this paper we will present the results of a case study that was implemented by the authors in the scope of a postgraduate research project that intends to contribute to the development of an efficient strategy to evaluate and to improve the quality and effectiveness of the learning of children in contexts of preschool education. This project is part of a broader project which is being developed by the General Direction of Innovation and Curricular Development of the Ministry of Education. The project presented here based on the methodology of evaluation and improvement, proposed by the EEL Project (Effective Early Learning) (Pascal & Bertram, 1999) having, as its main characteristics, an integrated vision of quality, professional and organisational development and of research in children education.

The EEL project aims to develop a cost-effective strategy to evaluate and improve the quality and effectiveness of early learning available to young children in a wide range of education and care settings and to achieve this through a collaborative, systematic and rigorous process of self evaluation, which is supported and validated externally. It is based on the belief that quality is a value laden, subjective and dynamic concept which varies with time and place (Pascal, 1995). The quality assessment is made with The Leuven Involvement Scale for Young Children, LIS-YC (Laevers, 1994; Pascal & Bertram, 1995), an observation instrument to measure the level of a child’s involvement in an action, focusing on the processes of learning, rather than on the outcomes and with the Adult Style Observation Scalefor Early Childhood Education - ASOS-ECE (Laevers, 1993; Pascal & Bertram, 1995), which is based on the notion that the style of interactions between the educator and the child  is a critical factor in the effectiveness of the learning experience..

This research aims at describing and analyzing a context of early childhood education according to the quality evaluation framework of the EEL project; suggesting measures for reorganization in collaboration with the partners in the project and identifying advantages and limitations to the application of the DQP project in this educational context.

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