University teacher’s know-how competencies: a scale for their evaluation

Abstract

This Teaching Innovation project focused on identifying essential competencies for university professors. Although the European
Higher Education Area establishes a series of competences that students must acquire upon completion of their studies, the know-how competences required for their teachers are not specified. They put more emphasis on technical knowledge than on psychological aptitudes, attitudes and human values. To address this gap, we developed an evaluation instrument based on the opinions of the students of the Job Maladjustment subject and the responses generated by Artificial Intelligence (Bing Copilot). With these data, we created the Scale to Evaluate University Professor Know-How Competencies, composed of 15 items and evaluated on a Likert-type scale with 9 response options. We applied this scale to 229 students from the University of León, obtaining high reliability with a Cronbach’s Alpha of .90. Therefore, we consider that this scale can be a valuable tool to help teachers understand what competencies students and society in general value. We believe that this information will be useful for our self-assessment process and continuous improvement of our teaching skills, as well as for recognizing and valuing the competencies already acquired.