RCAAP Repository

This article aims to understand and discuss some of the main concepts of education and work involving the training of the Brazilian worker based on the analysis of the creation of the Programa Nacional de Acesso ao Ensino Técnico e Emprego [National Program of Technical Education and Employment Access], Pronatec, established in 2011. The text presents a brief account of the ideas involved in the training of the worker at the end of the 1980s and 1990s, amid the drafting and approval of Law 9394/96 instituted by the end of the first decade of the 21st century. The article is based on documentary analysis and on the education laws of that period. It interacts with academic work in the fields of education and work, as well as the education of youth and adults. It examines the extent to which Pronatec strengthens the structural duality of capitalism, or creates emancipative spaces which allow education to be based on the integration between professional and basic training.

The article presents a bibliographical and documentary review of Course Preliminary Concept (CPC), considered the official indicator of quality in higher education for undergraduate courses in the country. The survey indicates that CPC underwent several methodological revisions since its creation to optimize the scope assessed. However, the main scientific debate on the topic questions several aspects of this indicator, such as automatic exemption from in-person tests; the development, standardization and weighting of the components; the high participation of students in the final grade; the disregard for the issue of diversity of higher education institutions and existing courses; among others. In this sense, we propose some reflections from a critical perspective in order to understand the weaknesses and potentials of CPC in the quality assessment of higher education courses.

The present study seeks to contribute to the debate about educational inequalities, using the study of the (re)production of the inequality of knowledge. Based on data from the longitudinal evaluation of literacy in Espírito Santo, from the 2012, 2013 and 2014 publications, this study has analyzed the percentage of variation between the high and low performance groups in the Reading Tests of the 1st and 3rd years of high school. The main results point out that the acquisition of skills is more heterogenous in the 1st year, which supports the hypothesis that, during the literacy cycle, students may have gone through intrascholastic reorganization processes which make their results more homogeneous. That is, less unequal. Despite this, there are certain skills that are not consolidated by the end of the 3rd year, which provides evidence of the ineffectiveness of the current policies for students to learn essential skills throughout the literacy process.

Questions associated with the binding of relations, in which the pertinence of indicators gain meaning and legitimization such as social conditions of production, promotion, reproduction and transformation, were raised in order to present a theoretic-methodological discussion about the construction of psychosocial indicators. Adopting the theory of social representations, the study identified that its contribution to the development of educational evaluation is insufficiently explored, even if the phenomenon of social representations is suitable to assess it. In this respect, the proposal to adopt a psychosocial paradigm with the aim of elaborating evaluation indicators in the educational context was understood from a new ethos, as well as from a renewed epistemic attitude, without ignoring the necessary rigor and seriousness for the studies.

A large-scale multidimensional assessment model based on the social quality of public schools is the focus of this study developed alongside the Observatório de Educação. The voice of teachers and managers captured via a focus group was contrasted with the theoretical framework of human training, generating an instrument containing indicators arranged in a Likert-type scale, which was answered by 846 municipal teachers. The statistically processed data showed schools that work towards social quality without losing their identity in the different dimensions. This study is intended to be used as a way to collaborate with the advances in the field of educational measures in order to prevent the reductionism of the uni/bidimensional indexes. Such advances do not disregard institutional participatory evaluation, which is seen as a strategic instance that enables the school to address its practices and deliberate about the new challenges in the fight for social quality.

This article aims to reflect on the process of offering pre-school education from 2003 to 2014. It is based on figures from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and guided by the set of laws that determine the compulsory universalization of pre-school education by the end of 2016. Thus, even if the number of children attending school has been expressive, there is a deficit of more than 600,000 places for 4 and 5 year-old children. Most of the children excluded come from the poorest 25% stratum of the population, who are black and reside in rural areas, especially in the North and Midwest regions. No impact was detected in the change of the progressive pace of enrollment, neither with the adoption of new parameters for the educational funding nor with the legislation that establishes preschool education as universal and compulsory. Also, no direct relationship between more places and better quality indicators was detected.

This paper proposes a methodology for using longitudinal data taken from the censuses of basic and higher education to calculate indicators, that allows for design an overview of teacher training for basic education in Brazil. Therefore, we conducted a study of the paths taken by undergraduate students and teachers of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics. The study used prospective analyses of databases, due to the potential for longitudinal follow-up of students and teachers. The results found for the proposed indicators point to a difficulty of increasing the number of teachers in the subjects studied. This results from the low completion rate of the undergraduate courses analyzed, together with the longer completion time for these courses between 2009 and 2013 as well as the low retention of teachers in the disciplines studied in basic education.

The paper focuses on the impact of the use of the School Performance Index – Literacy (IDE-Alfa) by the “Prêmio Escola Nota Dez”, a policy of the State of Ceará, that establishes cut-off points to award and to allocate financial support to public schools. It uses the Propensity Score Matching and multiple regressions methods to observe the effects of the reward/financial support on school performance, equity, and student participation rate on the external assessment of schools awarded and supported from 2009 to 2011, based on schools´ Index of school Performance results (IDE-Alfa) from 2008 to 2010. The results suggest a positive effect on the performance, equity and participation rate of the awarded schools and a smaller, but also positive, effect on performance of the schools with similar characteristics to the awarded ones. The results show a statistically significant impact only on the participation rate of the schools that received financial support.

The article describes indicators developed to represent aspects of teachers’ work in basic education and analyzes the multiple associations of concepts, in order to understand teachers in the school context. The metrics were developed based on a survey conducted in seven states of the country, conducive to a broad vision of teachers’ subjective experiences in schools. These indicators include: autonomy of teachers to develop their teaching activities; performance of activities with the participation of their peers; suitability of the environment in which they work; also, professional preparation to begin their careers. Joint analysis of these indicators confirms empirically that the web of relationships, established from prior knowledge of the subject, depicts the reality studied.

This article examines factors related to students and the school context associated with the transition from secondary technical schools to higher education. A survey was conducted with 1,570 students who completed or abandoned technical courses between 2006 and 2010, in 37 Federal Institutions of Vocational Education of Minas Gerais. Data were analyzed by means of a hierarchical statistical model comprising three levels: students, technical courses and vocational education institutions. The results show that the transition to higher education is linked to students’ personal, socioeconomic, professional and academic factors, as well as to courses and technical institutions (secondary school completed at the same institution of vocational education, and location of institution). The results contribute to the reflection on strategies and policies to improve the quality of technical education and access to higher education.

Educational equality, as defined in this article, is a condition in which any group of students presents the same performance distribution whose values match the learning experiences that enable them to have a productive and personally satisfying insertion into society. The main objective of this article is to introduce an indicator of educational inequality defined as the gap between the ideal performance distribution and that observed in a given group of students. The analyses presented here show that inequality in Brazilian elementary schools is very large and will never disappear if the improvements continue at the current pace.

This article aims to describe and analyze the results of a study that attempted to determine whether there was a relationship between technical knowledge on large-scale assessments and the effective use of indicators produced by them. We carried out a qualitative approach – focus groups and systematic observation in the context of a training course for school managers –, as well as a quantitative approach – a web survey conducted with principals, co-principals and pedagogical coordinators of municipal schools in Rio de Janeiro. Our main argument is that the expansion of knowledge on large-scale assessment systems tends to reduce resistance and allows the school management teams to use the data to guide their practical actions.  

The present article aims to evaluate the internal organization of Municipal Education Plans (PMEs) of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro, in order to check its alignment with the National Education Plan (PNE) 2014-2024. The legal norms as well as the diagnosis of the education situation and the definition of the goals and strategies are used as instruments of analysis. It was observed that, of the 19 PMEs analyzed, only nine do not present major problems in relation to their structure and organization, while the other ten have significant problems related to one or more dimensions examined and, of these, three present important misalignments relative to this new PNE. On the other hand, the advances made by these plans are emphasized, also stressing the importance of continuity and deepening of their evaluations, indicating other analytical dimensions to be considered.  

The article presents a systemic approach of evaluation of social policies and programs and the diverse nature of indicators necessary to respond to different demands for information for the improvement and assessment of public action. It introduces three epistemic perspectives of evaluation; i.e. the bureaucratic-normativism of operational auditing, the technocratic-positivism of economic evaluation of social projects and methodological-pluralism of systemic evaluation of programs which are associated with different conceptions of the nature, complexity and values of social policies. Following this, the article discusses the need to develop specific indicators for the various stages of implantation of the programs and for the evaluation of their systemic components – budgetary resources, institutional resources, human resources, portfolio of services, equipment and social participation. The studies and indicators of Pronatec program, Brasil Sem Miséria [Brazil without Misery], conducted from 2011 thought 2016, are used as an example of the systemic evaluation.

This article is the result of a bibliographical review aiming to identify relevant aspects of Brazilian scientific production on learning evaluation, which was carried out in eleven well-known education journals from 2010 to 2014. We evaluated 174 studies divided into five areas: higher education evaluation, basic education evaluation, external evaluation, evaluation and continuous training of teachers and other dimensions. The results showed that the evaluation theme is currently discussed in various periodicals, with a considerable number of articles dealing with learning evaluation. Many of these articles show that, in school life, evaluation is still the standard, i.e. evaluation is regarded as essentially a technical issue. This article proposes to bring elements that contribute to the understanding of evaluation practices and inspire other researchers, contributing to the expansion of knowledge evaluation in the Brazilian educational field.

An analysis of verbal protocols of learning processes, and their categorization based on Bloom’s et al. (1977) taxonomy of educational objectives, is developed to generate subsidies for an educational assessment of learning processes. The participants were six academics who were observed while solving problems involving domain and non-domain material. Results suggest that: i) knowledge that is relevant for the realignment of actions in situations of teaching, such as keywords that are meaningful for individuals that can be obtained even when inserted into nondomain materials; and ii) categorizations such as the ones proposed for this study can contribute to the effectiveness of students’ learning processes in situations that are appropriate for their level of development and towards the mastery of study content.  

This article presents a set of indicators suggested by teachers and aimed to evaluate the use of information and communication technologies in teaching practices. These indicators were selected by teachers from Brazil and Portugal working with digital technology programs in their countries. The study is a qualitative research that contains questionnaires, interviews and focus groups with teachers in the region of Aveiro, Northern Portugal and in the cities of Nossa Senhora da Glória, Tobias Barreto and Itabaiana, in the State of Sergipe, Brazil. The teachers’ responses highlight the need for establishing evaluative indicators that consider qualitative aspects of teaching mediated by digital technologies.

Nesta entrevista, o professor Reynaldo Fernandes, que trabalhou na criação de indicadores como o Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica (Ideb) e o Conceito Preliminar de Curso (CPC) durante sua gestão na presidência do Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (Inep), discute as opções metodológicas adotadas na construção de indicadores educacionais, suas motivações e propósitos, bem como os seus usos e desdobramentos. Ele destaca, ainda, os avanços já alcançados e os desafios atuais em termos do desenvolvimento e uso de indicadores educacionais no Brasil, bem como as discussões recentes da literatura internacional sobre o tema.Palavras-chave: Indicadores Educacionais; Políticas Educacionais; Ideb; Conceito Preliminar de Curso; CPC.  Indicadores educacionales: entrevista con Reynaldo Fernandes Resumen:En esta entrevista el profesor Reynaldo Fernandes, que trabajó en la elaboración de indicadores como el Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica (Ideb) y el Conceito Preliminar de Curso (CPC) durante su gestión en la presidencia del Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (Inep), discute las opciones metodológicas adoptadas en la construcción de indicadores educacionales, sus motivaciones y propósitos, así como sus usos y desdoblamientos. Destaca asimismo los avances ya alcanzados y los actuales desafíos en lo que se refiere al desarrollo y utilización de indicadores educacionales en Brasil, así como las recientes discusiones de la literatura internacional sobre el tema.Palabras Clave: Indicadores Educacionales; Políticas Educacionales; Ideb; Concepto Preliminar de Curso; CPC. Educational indicators: an interview with Reynaldo FernandesAbstract:In this interview, professor Reynaldo Fernandes discusses the methodological choices adopted in the construction of educational indicators, their motivations and purposes, as well as their uses and developments. Professor Fernandes worked on the development of indicators such as the Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica (Ideb) [Basic Education Development Index] and the Conceito Preliminar de Curso (CPC) [Preliminary Course Concept] during his term as President of the Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (Inep) [Anísio Teixeira National Institute of Educational Studies and Research]. He emphasizes the progress already achieved and the current challenges in terms of development and use of educational indicators in Brazil, as well as the recent discussions in the international literature on the subject.Keywords: Educational Indicators; Educational Policies; Ideb; Preliminary Course Concept; CPC.