Autonomia docente e avalia-BH: implicações das avaliações externas sobre o trabalho dos professores

Abstract

This study aimed at apprehending and analyzing the perception of teachers from the Municipal Education System of Belo Horizonte (MES/BH) regarding the implications of the Municipal Elementary School Evaluation System (Avalia-BH) for the teachers work and autonomy. The establishment of the Avalia-BH follows an educational management trend focused in results of external evaluations of the students learning, which is held, at Federal level, with the creation of the Basic Education Evaluation System (BEES), in 1990 and, in Minas Gerais, by means of the creation of the Public Education Evaluation System of Minas Gerais (PEESMG), in 1992. Such actions, typical of the New Public Management model, disseminate the objective of improving the quality of the public education by means of the establishment of goals for the school units and the monitoring of the students performance in external evaluations. In the field of education, the concepct of autonomy is related to the idea that the meaning of the pedagogical work must be built by those who work with education and by the school community, overcoming the control of the core organizations. The investigation was organized in three steps: bibliographical study, documentary research and field research. Two schools were studied, and six teachers were interviewed, as well as a principal, a deputy director and an union leader. In the analysis of the collected data, the attribution of at least three meanings to the expression teaching autonomy were verified: liberty exercised within certain limits; not interfering with the work in class; and professional competence. The participation of the teachers in the definition of the paths of the pedagogical process was not considered by none of the interviewed individuals, what highlights an estrangement of the teachers from the decisions made in school. One of the reasons presented for such estrangement was the difficulty in gathering teachers for discussing and deliberating. In spite of the fact that the interviewed individuals declared themselves as being independent in work, they pointed out control mechanisms for the pedagogical work established by the Municipal Secretariat of Education (MSE) by means of the obligation of following the curricular propositions of the system and the syllabuses of the external evaluations; the requirement of reports and the establishment of goals and demanding of results. Concerning Avalia-BH, the field research verified a contradictory relation: while the interviewed individuals claim to believe in the contributions of such tests for the improvement of the quality in teaching, they criticize the evaluation system and decide not to assign the diagnosis test of August/2015. Thus, the investigation points out to an estrangement of the Avalia-BH tests from the everyday pedagogical practice in the studied schools, highlighting a resistance process of the teachers towards the imposition of the result-focused management model.