Transparency is a frequently used word: people discuss transparency of initiatives, transparency of governments, private companies and even universities. Analysis of links in Google shows that these are the most frequent site themes connected with word transparency: 97 million links for “transparency government”, 57 million links for “transparency company”, 66 million links for “transparency education”. Transparency draws attention of public, but could we see the same situation at the level of teacher-student relationships?

Started with the Bologna process, changes in education encouraged universities to be more transparent to public and to students. Several programs moved into this direction not only in Europe, but also in U.S., in Russia and in other counties. It is assumed that everyone will benefit from transparency in university if we regard learning as a process of social interaction. Although, analyses of several teacher evaluation questionnaires and transparency in learning and teaching survey highlighted that their items fail to address students’ perceptions about transparency of the learning process.

Thus, in spite of the current need and tendency that universities become more transparent, as yet there is no valid method to assess transparency in teaching. Hence, the main goal of our research program is to devise and validate a Transparency in Teaching and Learning Questionnaire (TTLQ) which can be used in different countries. To test the cross-cultural applicability of TTLQ we aimed at comparing the structure of the questionnaire in Russian and Italian universities.

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