Conference Program

In recent decades, universities internationally have progressively developed institutional structures dedicated to supporting teaching and the professional development of faculty members. In many contexts, these structures are commonly referred to as Teaching and Learning Centers, although their names, functions, and organizational models may vary across different higher education systems. In the Italian university context, there is no shared terminology, and institutions adopt different names to refer to initiatives and structures aimed at improving the quality of teaching and developing the pedagogical skills of faculty members. Despite the growing attention to faculty development and the improvement of university teaching, the presence of such structures in the Italian university system is still largely unexplored. This contribution presents a national mapping of institutional structures dedicated to supporting teaching in Italian universities. The Italian higher education system includes state universities, recognized non-state universities, special-status university institutes, and online universities, all of which are part of a national accreditation and quality assurance system defined by the Ministry of University and Research and monitored by the National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR), which attributes increasing importance to the quality of teaching. The research adopts a mapping methodology based on document analysis and systematic exploration of the institutional websites of accredited universities in Italy. The analysis considered a total of 106 universities, with the aim of identifying the presence or absence of structures dedicated to teaching support and professional development for teachers. The preliminary results show a heterogeneous picture. Some universities have a formal structure dedicated to teaching support and faculty development, while in many other institutions no such structure exists. In other cases, there are initiatives for teaching innovation or teacher training, but these are not organized within a clearly identifiable institutional structure. The mapping represents a first attempt to systematize the spread of teaching support structures in the Italian university system and provides an empirical basis for future research on the role of such structures in improving the quality of university teaching.