Reflective teaching: Interpreting the results of pedagogical surveys at higher education

Abstract

Obtaining feedback from students is an essential requirement of reflective teaching, allowing teachers to refine their practice. In the scope of the student evaluation of teaching effectiveness at higher education, in this article they are analyzed the constituent axes and the results of satisfaction survey in a Portuguese private institution of higher education, with the purpose of measure teaching effectiveness. The quantitative study was based on pedagogical surveys, one survey for each curricular unit attended by students at one Portuguese private higher education institution. A performance evaluation of a set of 68 teachers was made, in a full-time working regime, by students. Teaching activity is evaluated according to nine items using a 7-level Likert scale, in which level 1 represents the lowest and the 7 the highest. The following characteristics were also included in the study: gender, department, years of service in the institution, professional category, academic degree, work area, number of courses taught and annual school service, in number of hours. In this work are presented the results of exploratory and inferential analysis of student’s answers to the survey applied in the year 2015-2016. Analyzes were made with the intention of verify if teacher's professional category, gender and years of service have influence on any of the items representatives of pedagogical skills. It is emphasized that whatever the semester, the professional category does not influence the pedagogical skills; gender and years of service of the teacher has no influence on the ability of the teacher to create conditions for the active participation of the students nor about the ability of the teacher to create a favorable climate for learning. This impact was evaluated for the two semesters in the 2015/2016 school year, using ANOVA one-way, MANOVA one-way and two-way parametric, correlation analysis-Pearson correlation and Reliability Analysis (Cronbach's Alpha). It is noteworthy, in the results, that the better the pedagogical skills, the better are their relationships with students. The results are discussed presenting contributions to the field of Institutional Management in Higher Education.