Abstract:

Within the Human Resource Management of companies and public and private institutions, performance assessment practices of employees have taken a critical role. The reason is that they allow to identify, measure and, ultimately, encourage the contribution of individuals to the achievement of business objectives.

Among the different tools used for performance evaluation, 360-degree feedback system has emerged as an useful and valuable tool for solving many difficulties and biases related to other traditional assessment instruments, which validity and reliability have been traditionally questioned. The 360-degree feedback system is based on the hypothesis that the assessment must be carried out from multiple evaluations of different agents that include several dimensions of individual's work from different perspectives. In this sense, the results of the evaluation would benefit from greater objectivity, reliability and validity.

In the educational context, the majority of faculties lack a robust system of evaluation to identify the most outstanding contribution to teaching their academic staff. Indeed, evaluation surveys filled in by students are usually the only tool employed for evaluating teaching’s performance. However, this type of assessment has some limitations. First, students are not been able to correctly assess some aspects. Thus, issues related to classroom’ features or other contextual factors could distort the personal evaluation of the teaching. In this sense, it is essential to identify which teaching skills should be evaluated, and more specifically, the skills, knowledge, actions and commitments of professors within educational context (Sorramona, 2004). Second, the results of this evaluation could have a significant bias since an only person participates in the assessment, and, therefore, the opinions and perceptions of other agents who are also related to the professor and his/her teaching are not considered.

Given these difficulties, there is a need to implement a 360-degree feedback system, which solves the problems of reliability and validity mentioned above. The 360-degree feedback is an evaluation practice that allows the participation of other agents who know the assessed professor, which result in the achievement of a most complete evaluation from different perspectives. In this vein, Jiménez et al. (2010.b) identify three types of evaluation: peer assessment, self-assessment and evaluation by others.

Based on this background, the aim of our paper is to analyze the implementation of a 360-degree feedback practice for university professors.
To this end, we have identified four potential evaluator agents: self-assessment, colleagues, students and faculty department. Likewise, and drawing on Jiménez et al. (2010.a.) and Sorramona (2004), we have considered three key teaching competences to evaluate: curricular competences, management competences and collaborative competences. With respect to curricular competences, the dimensions included will be professors’ training and professionalism. Regarding management competences, the organizational and planning competences will be discussed. Finally, within collaborative competences, we will analyze teamwork, conflict resolution and other interpersonal skills such as communication, commitment, motivation and leadership.

Keywords:

360 Degree Feedback System, Performance Evaluation, Teaching Competences.