Evaluation in the early childhood education: Brazil’s challenges in dialogue with experiences from Portugal and Italy

Abstract

This article discusses the evaluation in the Brazilian Early Childhood Education, through a dialogue with the Italian and the Portuguese experiences. It is a bibliographical study based on the presentation and discussion of academic publications and official documents on those countries’ experiences and on the recent trajectory of this theme in Brazil. The Portuguese and the Italian trajectories envision and develop a new evaluative culture of educational offer in an institutional level, guided by specific demands and their own particularities. Still, they share mutual principles, among which: democratic participation; negotiation; training potential; and the basic intent of improving educational quality. Knowing and understanding such paradigm shift matters for the development of academic research and for the implementation of evaluation pathways in public and private institutions and networks. Said experiences contribute to promote debates, to propose public policies for the evaluation and to establish evaluative practices, which aim at raising the educational offer to toddlers in nursery schools and preschools.