Resumo

LIBORIO, Helena  e  COSTA, Jorge Adelino. Evaluation and school organizational development: una perspectiva neo-institucional sobre un programa de evaluación externa. Ensaio: aval. pol. públ. educ. [online]. 2004, vol.12, n.43, pp.696-710. ISSN 0104-4036.

School evaluation is a subject that can be approached in a number of different ways. We shall present is here in an organizational dimension by placing ourselves under an analytical interpretative perspective and using new institutionalism as an analysis model. In light of this theoretical framework, organizations are usually perceives as loosely coupled systems since there is no connection between the organizational structure and the technical activity (this last one including leaching-learning activities). Therefore, school organizations validate their existence through mechanisms of conformity with the institutional milieu, making an appeal to the logics of confidence and good-faith, a good example of which is the emphasis they place in teacher professionalism. Consequently, school organizations lend lo avoid evaluation and inspection work seeing that this undermines the logics of confidence and good-faith that, under the view we defend in this paper, are the basis of the school organizations´ stability. When evaluation and inspection cannot be avoided, these tend lo incorporate their evaluative practices in a ritualized and ceremonial fashion, integrating them in an isomorphic manner with their institutional means, as a way to be legitimized and to survive. Based on a study undertaken in a basic 2^nd and 3^rd cycles´ school (which has students from the 5^th to the 9^th year of schooling) in the centre region of Portugal´ s mainland, we try to interpret - using the assumptions of the new institutional theory we have mentioned above - the impact of the Programa de Avaliação Integrada de Escolas (an external evaluation programme carried out by the Portuguese General Office of School Inspection).

Palavras-chave : School Evaluation; New Institutionalism; School Management; Organizational Development; Case Study.

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