Ana Paula Silva & M. do Carmo Clímaco CeiED / ULHT

1. ACTION PLAN FOR THE SOUTHERN EUROPEAN CONTEXT – a proposal Ana Paula Silva & M. do Carmo Clímaco CeiED/ ULHT

2. Background • The forwarded proposal is based on the Portuguese educational context, where it has been verified the need to pay attention to the modes how the policy action affects school leadership.

3. Policy goal chosen • Policy goal III: • School leadership capacity building for equity and learning

4. School leaders education and training in PT • Pre-service training: • Empirical and mimetic • In service training provided by the State: • Administrative procedures only • Diversified University master and PhD courses • demanded by the individual initiative of practitioners at their own expenses • Specialized course on school leadership sponsored by the Ministry of Education in partnership with Microsoft (less than 10% of SLs)

5. Evidences of insufficiency • "pitfalls" in the implementation of the autonomy regimen; • insufficient ownership of the autonomy regimen, namely on identifying, exploring and broadening its possible "margins“; • insecurity, which leads to use bureaucracy as a “shelter” at the expenses of a larger use of autonomy; • evaluation regimes in schools based in results “induced” many school leaders to adopt mainly elitist values and use legitimate and illegitimate means to select and segregate students; • Hence, the issues of “equity and learning” should urgently be part of the initial and continuous training programmes not only for school leaders but every teacher!

6. Previous questions to be addressed • Which areas in the school leaders’ training, beyond school administration issues, should be covered to enable them to promote “equity and learning” in their schools? • Who should plan and design such training courses? • Who should provide them? • Should the policy makers, namely the Ministries of Education in each country, foster these training courses? • Which models should the Ministries implement? • Should the Ministries of Education assume these training courses? • If yes, totally or partially? • If partially in what proportion? • If not, only providing incentives?

7. Possible answer to the 1st question in PT • Methods and research techniques (collecting information and data), treatment, analysis and interpretation of Education contextual data; • Strategic planning for contextualized education change, targeting school ; • Basic scientific knowledge on human behaviour, namely concerning people in professional context; • Lifelong learning (for grounded pedagogical leadership): • Learning in different life phases: childhood (1st and 2nd), adolescence and adulthood (youth, maturity and ageing); • Human capacities involved in learning, forms and modes; • The different learning contexts: informal, non-formal and formal ones. • Contemporary trends and tensions in education: old and new paradigms.