Support and Pedagogical Accompaniment for Teaching Performance in Higher Education: An Experience of Innovation

There is no doubt that every higher education institution aims to offer quality teaching, and the teaching function and role are key to this. However, a large number of university lecturers enter the teaching profession without prior pedagogical and didactic training. In order to address this situation and as a complementary resource, a programme of support for this function was developed and implemented in one of the faculties of the University of Zaragoza. A total of 114 university teachers participated in the programme. In order to assess the process and results of this experience, a quantitative descriptive study was carried out, in which 51 teachers participated. Among the results, it is worth noting that a large proportion of the teachers, 76.1%, indicated that their pedagogical training had been acquired mainly through experience, not initial training. It is also worth highlighting the clear need for support in this function, essentially in the first years of teaching and in contexts in which the teaching staff is not stable, as indicated by 90.2% of the participants. The bureaucratisation of teaching tasks is present, with teachers indicating the need for more support and assistance in administrative procedures and institutional regulations. The teachers point to the need to generate a greater culture of collaboration among teaching staff and to promote synergies, showing a deficit in this respect. All these data show, among other issues, the need for support programmes as well as the need to rethink the teaching function in the higher education institution and the importance of prior preparation for training and access to it. With regard to the programme implemented, the experience of innovation and the usefulness of the programme were highly valued, generating a first step in the design of university teaching accompaniment actions