Exploring Good Teaching Practices and Needs for Improvement: Implications for Staff Development

The article presents the results of a study that mapped academics’ teaching excellences, needs and areas for improvement to tailor educational staff development initiatives. Academics from seven Italian universities (Bari, Camerino, Catania, Florence, Foggia, Genoa, Turin) completed a survey that included three open-ended questions, aimed at exploring innovative practices, critical aspects and types of desired support. The study involved 7.278 professors who received the survey; 4.289 completed the main questionnaire, with a response rate of about 59%. Academics’ answers were analyzed by content analysis through the software Atlas.ti. For each question, results offer a wide picture of main elements mentioned by respondents. This experience represents an integrated systemic initiative using research to inform practices, promoting a shared culture of teaching and learning in higher education, that is critical for the vitality of the academic environment, as well as a scholarly approach aimed at valuing teaching and identifying tailored strategies to improve it. In fact, content analysis allowed researchers to design a multi-level action plan, taking into account three different stages: an institutional level, an inter-institutional one, and a national one.