The role of interpersonal and institutional trust in the participatory processes of public school quality evaluation

Author(s)

Sara Badra de Oliveira

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Faculdade de Educação
• Defense date: 2019-02-27

Examining board members

Mara Regina Lemes de Sordi; Pedro Ganzeli; Luiz Carlos de Freitas; Adriana Bauer; Elie George Guimarães Ghanem Junior

• Advisor: Mara Regina Lemes de Sordi

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the relevance of the concept interpersonal and institutional trust to understand the factors that affect public schools' capacity for educational improvement. There is a growing emphasis on how certain use of external evaluations, associated with managerial strategies of competition and punishment/reward, has negative consequences for assuring the right to education, and does not contribute to achieving the intended goals of deep and lasting change. In the opposite direction to the managerial mode of regulation, I assume that educational improvement depends on the active involvement of the school community in processes of participatory institutional evaluation (AIP), characterized by the principles of social quality, negotiation and shared responsibility. Hence the aim of the thesis is to analyze how the faculty trust in colleagues, parents, the management team, and the Municipal Department of Education, is associated with democratic processes of quality negotiation, in the context of the Education System of Campinas where an AIP policy has been taking place. In order to accomplish that, the quanti-qualitative methodological approach involved interviews, observation in two schools and the construction and validation of an instrument to measure institutional and interpersonal trust. I argue that the participation of school subjects in the construction of common purposes committed to social quality depends on strengthening an specific type of trust based not only on the dynamics of reciprocity, as predominantly featured by the literature, but also on recognition and redistribution (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 14/06295-5 - Relational trust in the "local actors - government actors" relation: research on its influence in active participation processes
• Grantee: Sara Badra de Oliveira
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate