An Information Service to Act in Binomial 'Monitoring-Improvement' of Educational Performance in Portugal: Three Focus Group Studies to Explore the Concept

摘要

This paper presents an analysis of a focus group discussion, which was carried out to collect information about the need, utility, and value that can be associated with the existence of an information service aimed to support educational leadership activities. The service intends to support leadership in monitoring and improvement of school performance and activities. To check the perceptions of school actors about the existence of this kind of service and to identify perspectives that would add value to the director's community, three focus group discussions were held in three different Portuguese country regions (Algarve, Lisbon, and Porto). The groups were designed to include a maximum of six school directors that tend to be representative of each region. The duration of group discussions ranged from one hour and ten minutes to one hour and thirty minutes. To stimulate discussion, a roadmap with eleven questions was prepared. The group discussions were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed. This paper details the design and preparation of the focus group activities and presents a reflexive discussion on the data collected.