Outlook on teaching and teaching practices in higher education.

Abstract

This paper addresses the outlook on university teaching and teaching practices in the new scenarios of the 21st Century. New requirements established for professional training call for significant changes in higher education teaching methods. The issue of quality now needs to be approached in a more holistic fashion in terms of its dimensions: the complexity involved in managing teaching and curricular changes, and the fact that teaching and evaluation methods need to be understood in the context of a new style of the teaching learning process. Teaching has expanded its meaning, and it now involves different phases or stages needed to develop the training project. Since several actors are involved in this process, and this calls for specific learning environments and a culture of collaboration and evaluation to achieve learning. The challenge of innovating in higher education teaching practices imposes the need for features and characteristics of quality in academicians which go beyond their own individuality and are projected on to his peers, the educational establishment and collective projects. Professional development takes place simultaneously with personal growth and it implies "know-how, willingness to do things and being happy".