Impact of a teacher development programme on approaches to teaching in higher education

The Bologna process involved a strategic change that included in its policy agenda a move towards a student-centred scenario. In addition, a reasonable association may be assumed to exist between teaching development programmes and student learning outcomes. This research study focused on the impact that a brief yet intense formal and non-qualifying teaching programme, delivered as a seminar and supported by the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) in Spain, had on teachers' approaches to teaching measured by the most recent Spanish adaptation of the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (S-ATI-20). Results showed that there was a positive and statistically significant impact of the training programme on approaches to teaching measured by the information transmission/teacher-focused scale (ITTF). Poor attendance rate to this non-compulsory programme, course duration, participant profile, psychometric structure of the questionnaire used, and the relationship between teaching development programmes and approaches to teaching are discussed.