Teaching Practice Assessment Indicators: An Index to What is Privileged as Defining Effective Teaching

This study investigated competences, knowledge, skills and dispositions privileged in five universities' teaching practice (TP) assessment instruments. It content analysed the universities' TP assessment instruments and identified indicators cutting across at least three of the universities' assessment instruments as representative of what they considered effective teaching indicators. Findings revealed universities' lack of consensus on specific indicators of good practice despite general uniformity in the assessment categories. There was greater consensus on input indicators which assessed teacher profile and what they brought into the teaching and learning environment than on the process or output of teaching and learning. Actuated by the need for measurability of assessment indicators, assessment instruments generally assessed the cognitive dimension of teaching at the expense of other dimensions. The study recommends a research-based determination of teacher and teaching quality indicators that best correlate with effective learning and their infusion into universities' teaching practice assessment instruments.