Learning our lesson: REVIEW OF QUALITY TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

2 FOREWORD 1. In the context of the sustained growth and diversification of higher education systems, civil society is increasingly concerned about the quality of programmes offered to students. As a result, there is an increase in public assessments and international comparisons of higher education institutions, not only within the higher education sector but in the general media. However, evaluation methods tend to overemphasise research, and to use research performance as a yardstick of an institution " s value. If these assessment processes fail to address the quality of teaching, it is in part because measuring teaching quality is complex and difficult. 2. Institutions may implement schemes or evaluation mechanisms to identify and promote good teaching practices. The institutional environment of higher education institutions can also lead to enhancement of quality of the teaching in higher education through various means. 3. The goal of the OECD-Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) project on quality teaching was to highlight effective quality initiatives and to encourage practices that may help other institutions to improve the quality of their teaching and thereby, the quality of their graduates. The project analysed the goal and scope of initiatives, and the role of the faculty members, the department, the central university and the state. The project sought to pinpoint long-term enhancement drivers of institutional support for staff and decision-making bodies, helping to fill the data gap in information on outcomes indicators for higher education. 4. The project examined the two main approaches to quality teaching: the top-down approach (those quality teaching initiatives taken by the institution collectively and determined by its leadership) and the bottom-up approach (those quality teaching initiatives taken by the teachers and which may nevertheless have an influence on the institutional policy on quality teaching). The focus of this review is mainly on the reasons for, and the effectiveness of, those initiatives. It is less concerned with the practical aspects and the concrete mechanisms used to put them into practice, which are heavily dependent on the circumstances of each institution. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author, Fabrice Hénard, would like to thank the experts who contributed to outlining the structure of the review, advised on the content and sources, and reviewed the draft version: Moynihan (Dublin Institute of Technology) helped to refine the online questionnaire while Bernadette Noël (Facultés Universitaires Catholiques de Mons) and Gabriella Navarro (Asociación de Profesionales por la Democracia y el Desarrollo) …