Practice of evaluation and quality of education: the role of the PON project

Abstract

The gap between the learning outcomes resulted from national surveys and the European competency levels, persuaded Italian schools to consider the introduction of changes in the school system, in order to achieve improvements and make educational paths more effective. Such considerations highlight the necessity of promoting and supporting a renewed culture of evaluation, by adopting new assessment approaches on which didactic decision-making processes can be based, in order to get a better educational quality. In the past few years, such need led to a series of projects that involved all school levels in different moments, and were based on the assumption that the improvement of learning results and teaching quality standards must be essentially related to a strong renewal of teachers training. The “Information and Training Plan on the OCSE-PISA Survey and Other National and International Researches”,
financially supported by the PON funds, develops a possible operative response
to these requests, proposing possible working paths towards didactic and organizational changes, and towards the production of a knowledge that fits the current social demands.