Conference Program

This contribution reflects on how the impact evaluation of the Professional Development constructed through the Erasmus+ project INSIGHT, can promote democratic innovation within the university culture. The project’s overall objective is to identify and promote inclusive university teaching strategies that enhance learning, participation, equity, and well-being for all students within a co-development perspective involving both students and teachers. By creating a community of practice within each partner institution the project also aims at promoting an inclusive and collaborative university culture, as a fundamental step to ensure the efficacy and sustainability of the project. The research team uses Guskey's impact evaluation model to support the transformative practice toward a democratization of both teaching methodologies and overall organization.

The framework (Damiani et al., 2024) is grounded in a contextualist epistemology that frames inclusion as the expansion of capabilities, agency, and empowerment within interconnected learning ecosystems (Morin, 2004; Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Sen, 1985). Inclusion can only be achieved through systemic and infrastructure changes informed by an idea of enhanced participation and democratic innovation in academia. Central to this innovation is an inclusive teaching device providing teachers with tools and reflective practices to achieve changes both in their class and among colleagues.

To implement and validate the inclusive teaching device a group of university professors was trained and supported in piloting the device. This paper presents the mechanism supporting implementation of the inclusive teaching device, specifically the Guskey’s impact evaluation model protocol.

According to Guskey, effective professional development evaluation requires collecting and analyzing data across five critical levels: participants’ reactions, participants’ learning, organization support and change, participants’ use of new knowledge and skills, and students' learning outcomes. The levels are hierarchical and interdependent; success at one level is generally necessary to achieve meaningful outcomes at the next. For instance participants need to be positively affected by professional development in order to learn from it, but their learning can often only be implemented if there is organization support, and so on.

Every step of INSIGHT implementation has been monitored through an impact assessment protocol, following the Guskey model. Data were collected before and after the training, to assess level one and two of the model. During the experimentation in university courses the project partners closely supported experimenting teachers through meetings, data collection tools and the establishment of a community of practice. This structure is not only necessary to ensure that effective changes will be made to instruction in target courses, but also aims to create, support and promote an inclusive and collaborative culture within partner universities, i.e. level three of the model. Level four and five were assessed throughout the experimentation phase collecting reflective tools from both teachers and students.

We will present data to show how the impact evaluation methodology applied has positively supported the inclusive teaching device implementation with a multiplying effect fostering greater inclusion and participation in targeted courses, triggering a process of transformation of existing power dynamics, limiting inequalities, and promoting a democratic university culture.