Evaluating and enhancing quality in higher education teaching practice: a meta- review

ABSTRACT

High-quality teaching is central to the higher education sector. Its pursuit has become heightened with increasing competition across institutions and opportunities to study globally through various modes. This systematic meta-review provides a synthesis of evidence relating to the methods used to assess and enhance the quality of teaching practice within higher education. Key words, synonyms and subject headings were used to search six electronic databases between January 2009 and August 2019. Titles and abstracts of publications were screened and full text articles assessed against the eligibility criteria. Findings were extracted and integrated in a narrative synthesis. Thirteen review articles, revealed that the use of teaching quality: student feedback data, self-assessment tools, peer review of teaching (formative and summative) and the use of teaching portfolios. We report evidence related to the effectiveness of each of these approaches and that a multi-modal approach may be most effective but requires consideration of resourcing.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching quality
• student evaluation
• peer review
• higher education
• teaching practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The University of New South Wales [Scientia Education Investment Fund].