Comparative Method of Countries Based on Evaluation and Its Effect on University Teacher Training

Abstract

A study of four countries reveals that each has a higher education system characterized by its own unique structure and organization for university education. A comparison of the evaluation and training processes for teaching staff is warranted, with these comparisons being based on clearly defined and operational concepts. The present study utilizes a comparative method based on a documentary analysis, which facilitated the identification of transnational experiences and best practices, as well as the identification of challenges common to the evaluation and training of university teaching staff. The objective of this analysis is to rethink these training processes and confront them within the education system and the environment in which it takes place. The preliminary conclusion indicates a necessity to reduce the existing gaps between theory and practice, propositional knowledge and practical knowledge, and between technical-instrumental rationality and the epistemology of the practice of knowledge. This reduction of gaps is intended to facilitate a focus on training from the beginning of academic life—the professorial career, attending to novice teachers—towards training in the fields of knowledge and senior teaching performance. The present preliminary documentary analysis is based on categories contained in the procedural operations such as: the evaluation approaches, the instruments used, the evaluation criteria, the evaluation results, and the impact on teacher training.