Research project: conceptualising kindergarten curriculum in the portuguese external evaluation of schools context

Abstract

In the research literature ‘external evaluation of schools’ is “used to describe external monitoring of schools” (Penninckx, 2017, p.2) and occurs with evaluators that do not belong to the school (Scheerens, 2002). External evaluation of schools is perceived as the same as ‘inspection’, ‘supervision’ or ‘appraisel’ (Macnab, 2004), or even as “external inspections of schools’ (MacBeath, 2002) and ‘school evaluation’ (Nevo, 2002). Defining ‘inspection’ as “an evaluation of the quality of schools including minimally a site visit leading to a judgement on whether the quality of schools is meeting the expected standards” (Penninckx, Vanhoof, De Maeyer, & Van Petegem, 2015, p. 333), is affirming that it is a mechanism to ensure the school accountability (Taubman, 2009, Van Bruggen, 2010, O´Neill, 2013). Despite the interrelation, there are shreds of evidence that it has a transformative and formative approach (Belloni & Belloni, 2003) by direct and indirect effects on schools (Penninckx, 2017). There are studies that demonstrates “how school inspection with its basis in specifications and fixed measures conflicts with the formative agenda of the incoming curriculum, causing a barrier to its creative realisation in schools” (MacKinnon, 2011, p. 89), also referring to the Portuguese reality (Barreira, Bidarra & Vaz-Rebelo, 2016). We can conclude that there is a tendency for the external evaluation of schools to be reflected in the kindergarten curriculum, by effects and side effects (De Wolf & Janssens, 2007; Penninckx, 2017), that similarity with formal education, it has provoked changes in the kindergarten curriculum by the knowledge fragmentation.