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8 - The Role of Textbooks in Improving Education in Portugal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2025

By
Nuno Crato
Edited by
Colleen McLaughlin  and
Alan Ruby
Colleen McLaughlin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Alan Ruby
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

Portugal’s education progress from 2003 to 2015 has been praised as one of the most successful cases in OECD countries. This chapter describes the main factors of this evolution, highlighting policy measures taken on the aftermath of the 1995 TIMSS and 2000 PISA shocks. These policy measures include a more detailed curricular development, the improvement of standard assessment and the disclosure of schools’ results. These changes acted against the background of an experienced teacher body and counted with a discreet, but powerful factor: the reliance on quality textbooks. This chapter describes the recent evolution of textbooks’ role and their part in keeping both stability and improvement in the taught and assessed curriculum. It concludes with an account of how these apparently successful reforms were halted after years of bipartisan support.

Keywords

Portugal 2003–15quality of educationrole of textbooks
Type
Chapter
Information
Politics and Knowledge Shaping Educational Reform , pp. 115 - 134
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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