UNIVERSITY OF MAKATI

MASTER OF ARTS IN EDUCATIONATIONAL MANAGEMENT

GRADUATE STUDIES

Course Description: THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT

Topic: FOSTERING QUALITY TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Speaker: Canoy, Jenny G.
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Quality teaching is the use of pedagogical techniques to produce learning outcomes for
students.

It involves several dimensions, including the effective design of curriculum and course
content, a variety of learning contexts (including guided independent study, project-based
learning, collaborative learning, experimentation, etc.), soliciting and using feedback, and
effective assessment of learning outcomes. It also involves well-adapted learning
environments and student support services.

Experience showed that fostering quality teaching is a multi-level endeavor. Support for
quality teaching takes place at three inter-dependent levels: 

Institution-wide level: including projects such as policy design, and support to

organization and internal quality assurance systems. 

Programme level: comprising actions to measure and enhance the design, content and
delivery of the programs within a department or a school. 

Individual level: including initiatives that help teachers achieve their mission, encouraging
them to innovate and to support improvements to student learning and adopt a learner
oriented focus.

Key Elements to Consider in Fostering Quality Teaching 

1. Policies and practices to foster quality teaching should therefore be guided by this
ultimate goal.

2. Quality teaching policies should be designed consistently at institutional, program

and individual levels.

The program levels are the pivotal place where quality teaching is likely to flourish. 

3. Strengthening horizontal linkages and creating synergies is a particularly effective

way of supporting the development of quality teaching. 

4. Coordinating the implementation, setting the right pace of change, leaving room for
experiments enable a steady improvement in the quality of teaching.

5. Incentives are also a help in sustaining quality improvement that will require
prioritization, consistent with the educational model and goals set by the institution.

6. Quality teaching happens first in the classroom. Not all teachers are innovators, and
few innovations can be disseminated and sustained without an efficient
organizational structure.

7. Higher education institutions ought to act themselves as “learning organizations”

rather than as “learning institute” in order to embrace quality teaching.

POLICIES AND PRACTICES IN FOSTERING QUALITY TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCTION

Policy Lever 1. Raising Awareness of Quality Teaching

 Prioritize quality teaching as a strategic objective

Set quality teaching as a strategic objective for the institution to signal the
institution’s commitment to fostering continuous improvement in teaching.

 Establish a teaching and learning framework

Ensure that all specific teaching and learning frameworks at department, school or
program level are consistent with the institution-wide framework. 

 Promote quality teaching within and outside the institution

Explore every opportunity to foster discussions on quality teaching, for instance as

part of program. Engage in national, regional and international networks to share
best practices in quality teaching and hold national or regional events (conferences)
giving exposure to institutional achievements on quality teaching.
  Strengthen links between teaching and research

Provide support for faculty involved in fostering quality teaching.

Policy Lever 2. Developing Excellent Teachers

 Anchor teaching in the quality culture of the institution

Promote the internal quality culture through active dissemination and make sure
teachers know the teaching and learning framework.

 Identify and articulate pedagogical competencies required for quality teaching 

Ensure that individual teachers, along with deans, heads of program and other team
leaders who are drivers of change are involved in defining these pedagogical
competencies and any associated quality benchmarks or performance standards.

 Upgrade pedagogical skills through professional development

Include professional development for academic leaders (e.g., transformational

leadership, community building, seminars) to strengthen their contribution to quality
teaching as well as the development of the institution. 

 Support inspired teaching

Identify champions of teaching excellence, examine what makes their teaching

excellent, publicize their accomplishments and use them as role models for others.

Policy Lever 3. Engaging Students

 Give students a clear role in fostering quality teaching

Recognize the potential for students to play an active and constructive role in
fostering quality teaching. 

 Develop reliable instruments and techniques for gathering and using student
feedback

Seek to improve the mechanisms for ensuring that feedback from students is acted
upon, collecting student feedback and develop guidelines to assist faculty in
identifying what instruments are best suited to which circumstances and for which
purpose. 

Policy Lever 4. Building organization for change and teaching leadership

 Distribute the responsibilities in teaching and learning fairly

Identify who is capable of successfully implementing reforms within and across

departments either because of their position of authority or because of the respect of
their colleagues and seek to strengthen their commitment to improving quality
teaching.

 Foster leadership on quality teaching

Assign institutional leaders, heads of departments, program leaders and directors of

supporting services explicit responsibilities for fostering quality teaching and
learning. 

Policy lever 5. Highlighting Innovation as a Driver for Change

 Encourage teachers and students to be active innovators

Foster exploratory approaches and incremental changes, including pilot testing and
careful evaluation of innovative teaching methods

Sustain collaborative learning about quality improvements of innovations, learn from

failures and engage reflection on the scope and potential pitfalls of scaling-up the
innovation.

 Assessing impacts

Ensure that evaluation results are interpreted, presented and used in ways that are
consistent with the educational priorities of the institution and lead to improved
teaching and learning.

Reference: http://www.oecd.org/edu/imhe