Font Size: 

The study of beliefs and needs of academic teachers represents an interesting andnovel field of research to support academic teaching activities and developing innovativeapproaches to teaching, whose impact on students’ careers and learningmay be relevant. However, as beliefs and needs are unobservable traits (i.e., latentvariables), specific questionnaires as well as suitable statistical methods have to beimplemented.In this contribution we focus on the analysis of a dataset collected in a surveypromoted by the University of Padua (Italy) with the aim of measuring beliefs andneeds of academic teachers in higher education. For this aim, we propose an ItemResponse Theory (IRT) approach, which allows us to: (i) classify teachers in groups(i.e., latent classes) that are homogenous with respect to their beliefs and needs inthe academic Didactic Activities (DAs), (ii) identify specific aspects of teachingwith respect to which teachers tend to disagree/agree, and (iii) relating beliefs andneeds of teachers to some practices developed in their classes.

IRT; education;