The researchers António Teodoro, Teresa Teixeira Lopo, Vítor Teodoro, Ana Carita and Elsa Estrela participated, as invited speakers, in the conference Fostering scientific citizenship in an uncertain world, promoted by the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) and which brought together more than 1200 members of the international science education research community.
The paper presented – A success story? The PISA impacts on media discourse and public policies in Portugal (2000-2018) – joined the Symposium What contribution can PISA 2025 make to improving science education?This Symposium, coordinated by Jonathan Osborne (Graduate School of Education – Stanford University), also had the participation of Louise Archer (University College London) and Knut Neuman (IPN, Kiel). Presentation slides can be viewed here.
The paper presents an analysis of the examination of Portugal’s education policy conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1987 as well as of its role in the legitimation of a new vocationalism.
In particular, the focus is on the key recommendation put forward in the examiners’ report regarding the investment in the initial professional qualification of young people and its relation with the creation, in 1988, of a new administrative body within the Portuguese Ministry of Education tasked with coordinating the system of non-higher education in the area of technological, artistic and professional education, responsible for launching the professional schools in 1989, and also the technology courses at secondary-school level in 1993.
The results of our analysis suggest that it was this examination by the OECD that effectively paved the way for the renascence of professional education in Portugal, but now rethought and redefined as a socially regulated, extended and grounded form of vocationalism.
In that article, which can be read in full here, the author carries out a preliminary reconstitution of the genealogy of the political decision to integrate Portugal in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), promoted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, made in 1999 and implemented in 2000.
For this we used a comprehensive analysis of newspaper articles, legal texts and documents on education policy as well as of interviews with relevant political actors. The first results of this analysis suggest that the decision, which was not unanimous among the government members with responsibilities in the education field, was taken by normative emulation, and aimed to consolidate a particular direction of the national education policy.
