A política de avaliação dos indicadores da qualidade na Educação Infantil: pressupostos legais e estruturais de uma escola pública de Humaitá-AM

Abstract

Evaluation has a fundamental role in school organizations that culminate in the propagation of the right to formal education in a teaching stage as important as Early Childhood Education. The practice of institutional evaluation in schools that serve early childhood is, therefore, crucial to develop the skills and aspects that the child will carry with him/her throughout his/her life. The child’s physical, psychological, cognitive and social development is a legal prerogative that the school must fulfill in the role of an entity responsible for the rights to quality in Early Childhood Education. Therefore, this research aimed to analyze the education policy of evaluating the Quality Indicators in Early Childhood Education in its legal and structural assumptions. Specifically, it was sought to analyze the influences and factors that led to the application of quality indicators in Early Childhood Education as a proposal for institutional evaluation of the “national quality parameters”; to analyze, in the macro-political context, the disputes and clashes of the interest groups that permeated the process of textual production of the quality indicators of Early Childhood Education; evaluate the dimensions and quality indicators of Early Childhood Education in a public school in the municipality of Humaitá, Amazonas, Brazil. The investigation sought systematized information in order to clarify, understand and contribute to the resolution of the problem raised: What contextual implications derive from the formulation of the “Quality Indicators” as an education policy for evaluating Early Childhood Education? Reflections were made about the contexts of formulation of education policies in Early Childhood Education in a non-linear analysis that the political-educational practice alone constitutes. The study was designed as a field research with descriptive purposes, in order to analyze the contexts of influence, text production and practice in which the discussions that formulate/interpret the institutional evaluation proposed in the Quality Indicators in Early Childhood Education take place. This research, with a qualitative approach, brings a theoretical and methodological analysis referenced by the Policy Cycle of Stephen Ball and his collaborators’, according to studies conducted by Mainardes (2006, 2007), Mainardes and Marcondes (2009) Zanetti et al. (2014), Lima and Gandin (2012) and Lopes and Macedo (2011). The locus of the research was an Early Childhood Education school in the Municipal Public Education Network, located in the urban area of the municipality of Humaitá-AM, with 12 professionals from this institution participating in the research. The results revealed: the tensions expressed by the research participants were raised by the absence of policy enactment aimed at institutional evaluation and the lack of knowledge about the evaluation policy for Quality Indicators in Early Childhood Education; there is an insufficient educational evaluation policy that underlies the compliance with the legal and structural assumptions that a public education institution for early childhood should have. Thus, this study presents an outcome with a misguided translation/interpretation of the Government’s actions in relation to the application of policies aimed at institutional evaluation in the investigated school. It is hoped, therefore, that the implications raised in this study may encourage education managers and recipients of education policies to choose the political-pedagogical character of the Quality Indicators in Early Childhood Education as a de facto and of use policy.