ABSTRACT

Background: In Portugal, educational policies have been implemented to ensure students’ entitlement to equality of opportunity in terms of school access and school quality. Hence, questions about how school quality is assessed, and the relationship between school evaluation and equity, are of high importance.

Purpose: This small-scale study focused on two key Portuguese policy measures in this area, namely the TEIP (Educational Territories of Priority Intervention) programme and Schools’ External Evaluation (SEE). It set out to analyse perceptions of how far these policy measures contribute to social justice and the improvement of school quality, following equity principles.

Method: In-depth, semi-structured interviews were carried out with personnel in four TEIP school clusters evaluated through the SEE process, and relevant policy-related personnel. The interview data were analysed qualitatively, using content analysis techniques.

Findings: Analysis suggested some differences in perceptions between groups of participants, with policy-related personnel associating efficiency and effectiveness discourses with equity and justice principles. Personnel from school clusters that were placed highly in evaluation rankings and classifications tended to perceive TEIP and SEE as largely positive ways of supporting school self-reflection and improvement, whereas personnel from school clusters not highly ranked were in general not so positive about the demands of external evaluation. Some expressed concerns that aspects involving bureaucracy could be counterproductive, leading to a de-emphasis on social justice.

Conclusion: The study draws attention to the multi-layered and complex relationship between equity and assessment of school quality. Although social justice is often regarded as a high priority in school evaluation, its association with discourses of efficiency and effectiveness can sometimes weaken equity and distort the concept of social justice in itself. It prompts the broader question of whether and how aspects of the assessment of school quality need to change in order to better support the principles of social justice.

抽象的

背景：在葡萄牙，已经实施了教育政策，以确保学生在就学机会和学校质量方面享有机会均等的权利。因此，关于如何评估学校质量以及学校评估与公平之间的关系的问题非常重要。

目的：这项小型研究重点关注葡萄牙在该领域的两项关键政策措施，即TEIP（优先干预的教育领土）计划和学校的外部评估（SEE）。它着手按照公平原则分析对这些政策措施对社会正义和学校质量改善有多大贡献的看法。

方法：对通过SEE流程评估的四个TEIP学校集群中的人员以及相关的政策相关人员进行了深入，半结构化的访谈。使用内容分析技术对访谈数据进行定性分析。

调查结果：分析表明，参加者群体之间在观念上存在一些差异，政策相关人员将效率和效果论述与公平和正义原则相关联。在评价等级和分类中处于较高位置的学校群体的人员倾向于将TEIP和SEE视为支持学校自我反思和改进的主要积极方式，而来自未得到较高评价的学校群体的人员通常对培训的需求并不那么积极。外部评估。一些人表示关切的是，涉及官僚主义的方面可能适得其反，导致对社会正义的过分重视。

结论：该研究提请注意公平与学校质量评估之间的多层和复杂关系。尽管社会公正在学校评估中通常被视为高度优先事项，但将其与效率和有效性话语联系起来有时会削弱公平性并扭曲社会公正本身的概念。它提出了一个更广泛的问题，即为了更好地支持社会公正原则，是否需要以及如何改变学校质量评估的各个方面。