Complexities of Evaluation: EDiTE at ENTEP Annual Conference
To have the European Network on Teacher Education Policies (ENTEP) annual conference held in Lisbon last week, was not only significant but also symbolic. ENTEP was constituted in May 2000 at the inaugural conference in Algarve following the proposal put forward by Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins, then the Portuguese Minister of Education. The proposal addressed other policy-makers and ministerial colleagues in the EU Member States with the purpose to develop the political dimension of teacher education in Europe. Thus, the first chair of ENTEP was Prof. Bártolo Paiva Campos.
As Mr Martins recalled in opening the conference in Lisbon, when ENTEP was first established the links between education and changing society was reflected through the work of teachers and their abilities of creating communities in schools that are based on ideas of democracy and underpin the principles of active citizenship.
Last week, on the 19-21 October, the ENTEP took a challenging main topic for a conference titled Evaluation Frameworks for Teachers and Schools. This overarching theme connected experts and opened up discussions from different perspective and the conversations were introduced by a welcome address of Maria Luisa Oliveira, the State Secretary for Education at the Director-General for School Administration of the Portuguese Ministry of Education.
The conference was also attended by some of our Early Stage Researchers, namely Lucie Bucharová and Malte Gregozewski, as well as Inês Alves, the project coordinator of EDiTE at the Institute for Education, University of Lisbon. Along with other participants, EDiTE representatives had the chance to discuss lessons from individual cases, including issues such as greater attention to formative assessment, importance of schools’ self-evaluation for improvement, creation of evaluation frameworks and the role of teachers as employee, technicians and professionals. Some of the conclusions emphasised that a different concept and vision of education inevitably must imply a different framework for assessment.
