Abstract:

The development of all human knowledge depends on its transmission, transference and assimilation, in order to manage the resolution of problems which arise from tasks. This action can only be tackled by the teaching staff, since they are the ones to facilitate or transfer experience and cognitions to the students during some extent of their educational trajectory.

In this sense, since human nature is involved in the activity of teaching. This latter is capable of perfection but only through a permanent process of revision of identified imperfections if it is intended to drive a teaching staff, an educational institution or an education system to a higher quality state.

This paper focuses in the identification of better teaching practices in the higher education level. The study started with the application of a questionnaire to know the students´ opinion at the end of the semester, and then a follow-up was implemented upon those professors who obtained the minimum and maximum scores.

The study was conducted in a state university in Mexico and the purpose was to identify the teaching staff´s best practices, according to the students´ opinion.

The research process was divided in four stages. It included the analysis of evaluations of the teaching staff´s practices according to students´ opinion during four consecutive school periods, to identify the worst and best evaluated professors.

1 Interview applied to the teaching staff evaluated with the highest scores.
2 Interview applied to the teaching staff evaluated with the lowest scores.
3 Characterization of teaching practices

Interviews were of a qualitative type, which intended to generate the opportunity to understand the teaching staff´s own world as they described it in their own words (Mayan, 2001, p.16).

This type of resource can be considered as standardized and no-programmed interviews, whose characteristic is to standardize the meaning of the questions, as they become familiar to all interviewed subjects. In this virtue, familiarization to the questionnaire is possible through previous studies on selected subjects, as well as the appropriate selection of the interviewers (Guerrero, 2001).

Finally, a semantic net was realized by putting together a series of categories identified in the general interview.

The semantic net allowed the conformation of categories associations found the interviewed subjects´ discourse. Thus, eleven associations were identified which were taken as descriptors which also were linked to other categories previously found in the general interview.

The descriptors were as follows: professional formation, didactic planning, teaching and learning strategies, didactic resources and materials, evaluation process, teaching practice feedback, interaction with students, interaction with other academics, best teaching practices, achievement of teaching practices and updating courses for teachers.

Some of the results show that teaching staff evaluation instruments imply the existence of students´ subjective appreciation when evaluating their own teachers. Nevertheless, they also imply the existence of certain objectivity, since the interviewed subjects should have obtained similar scores during two consecutive years.

They also show procedures for the establishment of criteria, based on the meticulous analysis of the teaching practices, to conform indicators that facilitate the process of standardization of the best practices.

Keywords:

University teaching practices, teaching staff evaluation, excellent teaching staff.