Participatory institutional self-evaluation

The research describes and analyzes an experience of participatory self-evaluation in two Municipal Early Childhood Education Centers (CEIs) in Sao Paulo. The experience was based on a process of applying the document Indicators of Quality in Early Childhood Education in Sao Paulo (2015). The document's methodology calls for the presence of all those involved - family, community and school teams - at self-assessment meetings and when drawing up action plans, in the quest to improve the quality of care in educational units. Our aim was to see how participatory institutional self-assessment contributed to the collective process of discussing the quality of early childhood education. In addition to the perceptions and expectations of the individuals, the context of the application made it possible to analyze the influence of the environment and the mobilization of the subjects in relation to the discussion on quality. The results show that, despite the limitations observed in the two nurseries, and taking into account the differences between the experiences, the proposal for participatory self-evaluation offers important potential for stimulating the construction of a negotiated quality, which includes the active presence of family members in the nursery.