Abstract:

In the last years, we have witnessed significant didactic and organisational changes in higher education brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic (Neuwirth, Jović & Mukherji, 2021) and the parallel profound transformation in the profile of the students enrolled in the master's degree programme in teacher education in Italy — with an increasing number of candidates already working as teachers in preschools and primary schools (Pagani, Delbosq, forthcoming). This change calls for a redefinition of instruments used to evaluate the effectiveness of the teacher education programme in order to identify possible improvement actions. Recognizing the value and the need to listen to the student voice in higher education and especially in the curriculum design process (Bron & Veugelers, 2014; Brooman et al., 2015) and in line with the fourth generation approach to evaluation (Guba & Lincoln, 1989), a mixed-method study was conducted to assess the master's degree programme in teacher education of the University of Milano-Bicocca. The study used a mixed-methods sequential (QUAN → QUAL) explanatory design (Creswell & Clark, 2017), structured in two phases. The first quantitative phase was conducted through an online survey (N=1141) designed using the Qualtrics XM software. The secondary qualitative phase comprised 7 focus group interviews (N=60). The present contribution will discuss the main results and reflections on how to redesign the master's degree programme also in the light of the new emerging student profile.

Keywords:

Higher education, teacher education, mixed-methods, student voice, curriculum design.