Competências e engajamento no trabalho docente para a inovação da educação superior

Abstract

This research aims to develop and validate a scale to measure subjectively the teaching competencies to innovate in higher education. In this sense, it is conceived that the teaching competencies to innovate are the continuing education ‒ search, update, and reflection on teaching practice; the creativity ‒ creation, proposition, development, and risk-taking of new ideas with given autonomy and protagonism and; digital fluency ‒ diverse use of technological resources that are linked to the planning of teaching practices to the purposes of improving theoretical or practical learning. Thus, the thesis brings two original scientific contributions: i) propose and validate a scale to measure the teaching competencies to innovate in higher education, in a context where there are no instruments of this nature and ii) associate these competencies with the engagement in teaching work. Thus, based on the theoretical analysis, an initial set of items was elaborated, which passed the validity of the content, using the Delphi technique and face validity, with a pre-test that underwent exploratory factor analysis. Subsequently, a survey was carried out to obtain a sample of 523 respondents. The set of items was validated by the structural equation modeling so that the Teachers’ Competency Scale for innovation in higher education (TCS - HIE), which has four dimensions: continuing education, creativity, digital fluency, and scientificity, and it has psychometric properties to subjectively measure what was proposed. Furthermore, the dimensions of the TCS - HIE scale are related significantly to the dimensions of the Work Engagement Scale (WES), according to the proposed hypotheses, confirming the thesis that there is a relationship between the phenomena in question. Finally, high levels of teaching competencies in the surveyed sample in all dimensions were identified. In the same way, high levels of engagement are perceived, as being cognitive, emotional, social with colleagues, or social with students. Considering the former information, the research reached the goal to develop and validate a scale, which is expected to be used by distancing itself from classificatory diagnoses, creating reflective spaces on teaching practice in higher education with a view to innovation.