engleski

Students' Assessment of Ideal and Real Teaching : A Case From Croatia

Regarding the fact that quality of higher education teaching has been seriously neglected in Croatia, the aim of our research was to examine the quality of teaching at the Croatian universities from the students' point of view. Fifteen criteria of quality teaching (1. Teaching objectives are clearly defined ; 2. Students' interests are encouraged ; 3. Teachers are well prepared for their teaching ; 4. Teachers are experts in their subject ; 5. Teachers are enthusiastic for their subject ; 6. Teachers emphasise important parts of the subject ; 7. Teaching methods are used which encourage active cooperation by students ; 8. Active and independent student learning is encouraged ; 9. Teachers respect students' individual differences ; 10. Teachers ask for feedback ; 11. Teachers respond to students' feedback ; 12. The assessment of students is fair and reliable ; 13. Individual courses are designed so as to contribute integrally to a student's subject of study ; 14. Books and other resources are available ; 15. Teachers show readiness to help) were offered to 469 students for the assessment (1-5 scale). The students were supposed to rate the importance of every criterion according to the "ideal" teaching (the general importance of every criterion for the quality teaching) and "real" teaching (the scope in which every criterion is respected in actual teaching at the university). The results of the Wilcoxon Matched Pairs test has shown us significant statistical difference in the assessment of each criterion, when compared as "ideal" or "real". In addition, the results show that students have rather traditional view on teaching quality, and consider themselves as the least important part that should be taken attention to in quality teaching. We believe that students' assessment in this case could be understood as an indicator that university teaching in Croatia does not - to a sufficient extent - respond to the quality criteria. According to these results, our aim is to develop a model of university staff development, which aims to build the "culture of quality".

higer education; higher education teaching; students' assessment

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