Educational policies and the quality of teaching: perceptions of Portuguese teachers

Abstract

The educational and curricular policies of the last two decades reflect attention to the quality of teaching by associating it with educational success, the improvement of student learning and the professional development of teachers. In this article we present some of the results of an investigation carried out with Portuguese teachers from the first cycle of basic education, who had, as their main objective, the understanding of the impact of educational and curricular policies on the development and identity of teachers, as well on the quality of teaching. We took as references various legal documents, especially the new Statute for a Teaching Career (STC) and the Evaluation of Teacher Performance (ETP) and other programs implemented by the Portuguese Ministry of Education. This longitudinal study was carried out over three years and it adopted a methodology of both a qualitative and quantitative nature, which permitted us to understand the perceptions of teachers of the first cycle of basic education using: 1) written and oral biographical narratives; 2) discussion groups formed specially for the purpose; and 3) replies from 249 questionnaires returned by teachers of this cycle. In this text we will report the results of analyzing the replies from the questionnaires and the statistical analysis made with the Chi-squared Test and the T-Test, which corroborate other studies carried out, particularly at an international level and which reveal that the teachers felt that the educational policies interfered negatively with their work, thus provoking: a weakening of their professional relationships, interaction with their peers and their collaborative work, as well as professional demotivation and disinvestment with a resulting negative impact on the quality of their teaching.