Quality teaching and learning in our universities are two of the main objectives pursued in the EHEA.  Fundamental to this pursuit of quality, and an area currently in vogue in educational research, is being able to evaluate the work of university teachers appropriately, and developing the right kind of instruments for the evaluation of university teachers is one of the main objectives within the higher education system in Spain.  This paper presents the results of research carried out into the definition of the teaching competence within the EHEA, the creation of appropriate instruments to evaluate integrated teaching competences in Spanish Universities and a study of the construct validity.

Whether the current evaluation instruments are appropriate or whether additional instruments should be developed to more accurately evaluate university teachers is the subject of discussion and reflection by many teachers and researchers in their quest to improve quality in higher education.  Results have shown that in the evaluation of their teaching staff the majority of Spanish Universities make use of the student responses to the questionnaires which contain specifically designed questions to identify excellence and which indicate the degree of student satisfaction with their teachers.  However, educational research has revealed that the information gathered from the student questionnaires should be complemented with other systems of evaluation such as peer reviews, self-evaluations, portfolios…  Indeed, the Spanish Agency for Quality Evaluation and Accreditation (ANECA in its Spanish form) developed the first evaluation model adapted to the EHEA and included a self-report and a report from an academic peer as well as the student questionnaires.

University teaching competence has centred on two basic pillars: teaching and research, with occasionally a third pillar being taken into consideration which is university management posts.  However, external agencies, which have a remit to evaluate and accredit the university teachers, value far more highly the research work undertaken to the deficit of the teaching quality.  Thus it can happen that an excellent researcher, considered a poor educator by his or her students, will receive accreditation as a university teacher from these external agencies. Consequently this can jeopardize the way teaching competences are defined and evaluated and lead to greater prestige being given to competences associated with research instead of competences associated with imparting quality teaching.

A number of public and private universities in Madrid have been collaborating on a research project to identify reliable and valid indicators for the evaluation of teachers and the first step has been to attempt a definition of what we understand as a teaching competence from different perspectives.

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