NEW PRACTICES TO IMPROVE TEACHER EVALUATION

The European Space for Higher Education takes the promotion of the quality as one of the central themes of development in the Universities.

Specifically, the document “Criterios y Directrices para la Garantia de la Calidad en el Espacio Europeo de Educacion Superior” promoted by the Association for Quality in Higher Education (ENQA), and revised by the ministers of the states that signed out Bologna Declaration, in Bergen, year 2005, recommends the insurance for the quality of teachers as one of the standards and guidelines of action for the insurance of the university quality.

Between the criteria and directives, the section 1.4 provides the guarantee of quality of the educators, which establishes that the University must have means to guarantee that teachers are qualified and competent for these works. The directive says: "the University must insure that the procedures for hire educators include the measures to check new personnel has, at least, a minimal level of competence. It must give them opportunities in order to develop and extend their capacity of teaching and guarantee they are stimulated to succeed in their skills".

The University must provide opportunities to the teachers of low performance in order that they improve there skills, so that they can obtain an acceptable level of knowledge. In addition it have to provide the means that allow them to give of fall of his educational functions if there is demonstrated that they continue being ineffective.

From everything previous, the evaluation of the educational activity of the new teachers, as well as the senior teachers, is one of the keys to know the level of competence of the educators, and to adopt decisions in relation to their professional development.

The University of Vigo has 1821 teachers. Conscious of the importance that has the educational activity that unrolls teachers in Centers and Departments, and the need to acknowledge their work, and to favor and stimulate the initiatives of evaluation and improvement has prepared an evaluation protocol named "Docentia Procedure for the Validation of the Educational Activity of the Teachers".

The above mentioned program of evaluation has as aim to obtain the information confirmed and normalized about the jobs related to planning of education, development of the education and academic results and degree of satisfaction obtained in surveys, so that this information, based on the unification of criteria and in the guarantee that any process of evaluation must have, could be used for the evaluation of teachers, the recognition of the jobs of improvement of teaching quality and of educational innovation put in practice, the definition and organization of the formation programs of the teachers, and other activities that in the future want to be approved.

The evaluation of the educational activity is, for the University of Vigo, an opportunity to confirm the educational competence of teachers and the good practices on teaching.