This paper focuses on the evaluation of teaching in Higher Education. We assess the quality of teaching based on the perceptions of students and teachers, and analyze its association to student, teacher and course factors. The agreement between students and teachers’ perceptions is also evaluated.

Our study has two main purposes: to find out how teachers and students of the Health School of Vila Nova de Gaia evaluate its’ teaching quality; and to ascertain how appropriate is the use of the Student's Evaluation of Educational Quality (SEEQ) questionnaire on both students and teachers as a way to evaluate teaching quality.

The evaluation of teaching in higher education is relatively recent in the European and Latin American context, although quite traditional in the Anglo-Saxon one. According to Fernández, Mateo and Muñiz (1996) this type of assessment has its origins in the late 1920’s in North America, standing nowadays as a universal institutional practice.

Muñoz Cantero, Ríos de Deus and Abalde Paz (2002) and Simões (2000) report that the evaluation of teaching quality in higher education, based on the perceptions of students, may gain consistency in the majority of universities. In fact, it’s becoming one of the most important dimensions related to quality in higher education institutions. It can be stated that without assessing teaching quality in higher education, the improvement of pedagogical issues might become just rhetoric (Santos Rego, 2000).

According to Centra (2003), there is a wide variety of publications on teacher’s performance assessment and on its models. Indeed, there are over 2,000 studies referenced on ERIC database, by different authors from different countries.

Ramsden (1991) states that teacher assessment by students has been assumed by governments as a valid performance indicator, as well as a direct measure of students’ satisfaction with their college experience and, in particular, a quality indicator of teaching (Marsh & Roche, 1994; Marsh, 1987; Ramsden, 1991; Santiago, Tavares, Taveira, Lencastre, & Gonçalves, 2001). Harvey (2003) suggests that the integration of results of attitudinal and affective nature conveyed by students’ perceptions might be an empowerment effort, making institutions more responsive to their needs and ensuring higher levels of satisfaction.

According to Marsh (1987), students’ evaluations of teaching effectiveness are multidimensional, reliable and stable, depending more on the instructor who teaches the course rather than on the course that is taught; these evaluations are relatively valid against a variety of indicators of effective teaching, relatively unaffected by a variety of variables hypothesized as potential biases.

A longitudinal study conducted by Marsh and Hocevar (1991), which evaluated changes in teaching performance based on students perceptions (following 195 teachers over a 13-year period), concluded that there is a consistent standard assessment of teachers’ competence.

Fraser (1991) pointed out some advantages on the perception approach to evaluate teaching: it is less expensive than classroom observations, which require specialized and experienced observers; it is based on the evaluation of the actual experience of students in a specific environment, while evidence from observation is usually restricted to a limited period of time; and it involves the judgment of all students in the class, while observation techniques typically involve a single observer.

On the other hand, it is important to develop assessment methods that include teaching self-assessment, providing different perspectives on evaluation.

In two studies where teachers performed their self-assessment based on the same instrument used by students, Marsh (1987) concluded that: the factor structure of both questionnaires is identical; the level of agreement between student/faculty in each dimension of the questionnaire is significant; in most cases, mean differences between multimethod analysis provides support for the discriminant and convergent validity of the evaluations.

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