The Evaluation of Teaching in Higher Education Institutions

Over the years the role of higher education has assumed a growing importance in providing more and better services to citizens, which has meant that higher education institutions focus more attention on meeting these expectations. This has led to the emergence of the implementation of management systems and quality assurance in this area, with the aim of striving for excellence and continuous improvement. Because of the growing concern with stakeholder needs, evaluation has gained a higher degree of importance, resulting in the emergence of tools for measuring organizational and individual performance. With this research, we intend to make an analysis of the regulations for assessing the performance of teachers of public institutions of higher education in Portugal, published in the "Diario da Republica" (the official newspaper) up to the end of 2011. Document analysis is used to compare the performance assessment regulations of teachers between the two types of higher education institutions - universities and polytechnics and within each of these types of institutions. This research shows that individual performance assessments of teachers, in close liaison with other management tools, plays a central role in higher education institutions, even though there are differences in the assessment process between the two types of institutions. It also shows that there is no uniformity with regard to the parameters, or indicators, used, in terms of nomenclature. However, to overcome this predicament it was possible to group certain parameters and design a proposal for a single model that would enable the comparison of performance beyond the borders of each university or polytechnic. With this research we want to make a contribution to the scientific community, through observation of the reality under analysis, and assist governing bodies and key stakeholders to participate in performance evaluation, with the aim of continuous improvement.