“La valutazione della didattica universitaria: tre casi nazionali”

The essay looks at the evaluation of university teaching in three European countries (Britain, France and Italy) and describes evaluation activities and how they are implemented in contexts that are very different in culture and tradition. While evaluation in France and Italy is relatively recent and their evaluation systems are still at a developmental stage, the culture of evaluation in Britain has a longer tradition and the picture is rich and varied, requiring deeper study of some practices which are thus described in detail. Evaluation is a useful tool for improving quality, but it must be adapted to the system in which it is applied. This concept, unfortunately, is not as straightforward as it may seem if we analyse the practices underway and their results. In this regard, the examples taken into consideration demonstrate how the different ways of dealing with the “issue” of evaluation of teaching create very divergent effects and, above all, show how it is not enough to just copy winning models in certain contexts in order to increase the quality of higher education.