Abstract:

Universities in Chile have placed increasing emphasis on quality assurance, following the 2018 law on higher education. The evaluation of teaching is a relevant issue for the improvement of the quality of education. So, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV) has a system to get the students’ perception about quality of teaching. This study seeks to understand the opinion of the agents involved on the potential for feedback to improve teaching practices.

A case study focused on Psychology at the PUCV was carried out. A semi-structured individual interview was applied to a new teacher, an experienced teacher and the head of studies, and a group interview was applied to five students. Experts validated the script, which allowed us to select the right questions for the intended purpose. An analysis of the transcripts’ content facilitated the inductive generation of interpretive categories.

Among the results, we highlight the theme categorized as ‘Student feedback on the subject and teaching’, understood as the qualitative comments made by the students on the development of the subject and teaching practice, within the teaching evaluation questionnaire. This theme emerged in 12 units of meaning (out of a total of 324), which attracted attention to deepen our understanding based on the responses obtained. Regarding the processes of analysing student feedback, the information provided by the students in this area is positively valued by the teaching staff, as it provides guidance on how to improve their practices. The need to incorporate institutional support spaces to analyse this information is also highlighted, so that improvement actions are configured as dynamics of work and joint responsibility between the teaching staff and the university managers. The Head of Studies, on the other hand, considers that the main concern is the feedback to the teaching staff, as it is considered a slow and late process, which hinders the integration of the proposed improvements. Within this framework, the teaching feedback process, from the students’ perspective, is a relevant process in terms of its impact. In this sense, they tend to link this instance to actions aimed at improving the teaching task because this, in turn, would be configured as a benefit in the education students receive.

Finally, and based on the answers made by the different informants, it is acknowledged that feedback processes have a high level of impact on the teaching-learning processes. However, the interviewees mentioned that the current teaching evaluation instrument, the student opinion questionnaire, is not configured as an analysis and reflection process for improvement. Given this, spaces for dialogue between teachers and students have been organized on the Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology to assess the quality of teaching and take decisions aimed at improvement. This is put into practice every semester in all the subjects.

Keywords:

Educational quality, teaching, universities, feedback (learning).