Changing the point of view about the role of Large Scale Assessment: how European countries manage evaluation in decentralization processes

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Torelli, C., Fiore, B., Freddano, M. & Poliandri, D. (2019, June 6-8). Changing the point of view about the role of Large Scale Assessment: how European countries manage evaluation in decentralization processes [paper presentation]. Education and Post-Democracy – 1st International Conference of the Journal «Scuola Democratica», Cagliari, Italy.

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IEA, PIRLS and TIMSS and OECD-PISA results have entailed a political and media impact which paved the way to several reforms in the school system of many European countries, although they were introduced in different times and with different ways. The large scale assessment has received severe disapprovals for the theoretical and methodological system which characterizes this kind of assessment. Criticisms largely question the low attention of the bottom-up approach given by standardized tests in school system analysis. A growing attention has been given to vertical and horizontal dimensions in the last years. The vertical dimension focuses on the decentralization of powers towards intermediate public or not-public organizations. The horizontal dimension refers to school managers and teachers’ powers in creating schools networks and peer relations among schools. National and supranational governing bodies, based on the increasing legitimacy of polycentrism in assessment measures, are adapting their approach to a decentralized decisional process, creating a link between the edge and the core system.

This work aims at giving a review of the main assessment methods (self-evaluation, external evaluation and improvement) used in European school systems, while focusing on the heritage, the links and the redeployment of the methodological systems applied by both national and supranational organizations including intermediate organizations and schools networks. Focusing on a specific study on decentralization in Italy, it will be introduced previously a review of the main laws and directions regulating the evaluation system in order to describe the main actions implemented at a decentralized level to support schools in the process of self-assessment and improvement. A specific attention is given to the definition of the object and the main activities of the financed projects; this allowed to identify the main areas of attention of schools in reference to the outcomes, the processes and the main activities developed in the field. The documentary analysis of both Web portals and funded projects, shows the complexity of improvement process due to the very articulated ways schools proposed it.

The analysis will reflect in particular on the complex and controversial evolution of the decentralization process and the developing polycentrism of European school institutions.

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