Quality indicators, a new method for evaluation of teaching practice in teacher education programmes in Slovenia: Example of quality indicators for school mentors - external mentors

Abstract

The paper focuses on quality indicators for teaching practice which were created for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana in the framework of the project "Quality of the University of Ljubljana" (2013-2014). So far there have been no systematic evaluations of the students' teaching practice for the entire Faculty of Arts. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the teaching practice of students, the role of school mentors, and the given method of determining quality indicators for all the participants in the process, namely school mentors, students, faculty mentors, faculty coordinators, and school coordinators at the Faculty of Arts. The Offering Quality Education to Adults Model was used as the method of determining quality indicators. The paper explains how quality indicators for the work of school mentors have been selected to aid in preparing efficient questionnaires and interviews which can help us assess the quality of teaching practice of students and plan measures for improvement. The results show that selected quality indicators for teaching practice are concrete and general enough to be used for an internal evaluation and quality assessment of any teaching practice (an example is given for history programme) and also in various teacher education programmes at universities across Slovenia and abroad.