Typology of Teaching Profiles: A Model for Improving the Quality of University Education in the Context of Sustainable Development Goal 4

Abstract

Developing tools to assess university lecturers on the quality of their teaching practice is a priority for achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4. The aim of this research is therefore to propose a typology of teaching profiles and analyse the factors that influence each of them, with a view to proposing a model for identifying lecturers who need support. Based on 10,938 observations made between August 2021 and June 2025, a heuristic method was used to classify all observations into six quadrants according to student academic performance and student evaluations of their teachers. Based on the classification of all observations into six quadrants, called teacher profiles, logistic regressions were performed in Gretl software version 2024c to identify which characteristics inherent to the teacher, the educational context, and the curricular stage explain the classification of the teacher into a particular profile. The results indicate that full-time teachers and those with higher academic qualifications tend to obtain higher scores on the SET, while online or hybrid modalities are associated with lower scores on the SET. In addition, the six teaching profiles obtained an accuracy of over 80% in the logit models, highlighting significant effects of age, modality, and curricular level (p < 0.05) on the probability of belonging to each quadrant. It is concluded that factors related to curricular advancement, the educational context, and those inherent to the teacher can explain the proposed typology. This typology could serve as a management tool to identify teachers who need specific support to move towards profiles that are ideal for the university institution. Among the main limitations of this study are the heuristic methodology and the fact that the data were obtained from a single educational institution.