Consulting in management and performance assessment

a work field for psychopedagogue

Abstract

The article focuses on the new role to be played by a psychopedagogue as a consultant in the evaluation of teachers’ performance. The proposal is based on the understanding that, due to his academic background, a psycho- pedagogue should be able to act as a process consultation, who contributes to build and maintain management systems, and leads productivity assessments as well. Moreover, it is also influenced by a vision of the teacher’s need to get feedback about his performance, and orientation on his professional demands imposed by the changeable contemporary worlds. The text seeks to contribute for the enlargement of the psychopedagogue workspace, leading him to develop a new competence. At the same time, it tries to warrant that the teacher could rely on the support of a performance evaluation system that effectively promotes his professional and personal development. It presents the performance evaluation system as a resource to stimulate changes, reduce mistakes, induce better productivity, and improve results, both at human and organizational level. In addition, it criticizes the traditional methods of productivity assessment, and introduces the alternative method of Performance Portfolio, which is appropriate to document, stimulate, and evaluate the professional performance. However, this is not so simple to be used in the praxis, for demanding clear objectives, clear understanding of the items to be considered, and experience to make decisions on what to incorporate. This complexity induces the proposal that the psychopedagogue starts to work as a consultant in the elaboration of Teacher’s Performace Portfolios.