Impact of faculty development on teaching practices in higher education: a scoping review
TL;DR
The literature makes its central claim, that development changes what teachers do, largely on the teachers' own testimony, but where that claim is tested against external evidence, it holds less often.
Abstract
Faculty development (FD) is an established feature of Higher Education, yet its impact on what teachers actually do in their teaching has been studied less often than outcomes such as satisfaction, learning and attitudes. This behavioural level is the third of the four outcome levels in the adaptation of Kirkpatrick's model developed for FD in Higher Education. No prior review has mapped it across disciplinary fields outside health professions education, and the present scoping review addresses that gap. Following the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews, we included empirical and theoretical sources published in English between 2005 and 2025 that reported a change in the teaching practices of university teachers following structured FD, in any discipline other than health professions education. Scopus and Web of Science were searched, with the last search on 25 April 2026. Three reviewers charted the data independently, coding the evaluation framework, the assessment method and type of evidence, and the indicator and direction of effect. Empirical studies were appraised with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). The search yielded 491 deduplicated records, of which 69 met the inclusion criteria. The evidence is recent and concentrated in the United States and in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Fifty-three of the 69 sources name no evaluation model. Of the 64 empirical studies appraised, 29 used non-randomised or descriptive quantitative designs and only one used random assignment. Qualitative studies largely met their criteria, whereas quantitative and mixed methods studies recurrently showed incomplete outcome data, unaccounted confounding, undocumented intervention fidelity and unexamined divergence between strands. Of 217 behavioural effects, 150 rest on teacher self-report and 66 on evidence external to the teacher, with one effect not classifiable. The direction of effect depended on how the change was established. Positive effects accounted for 65% of the self-reported behavioural effects but for 42% of the externally documented ones, and for 65% of those measured without a baseline against 49% of those measured with one. The literature makes its central claim, that development changes what teachers do, largely on the teachers' own testimony. Where that claim is tested against external evidence, it holds less often. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/SAERU .