Thinking or talking about teaching? Student evaluation as an occasion for dialogue or reflection on teaching

Abstract Using student evaluations of teaching (SETs) as a quality assessment tool have long been a highly debated topic among both practitioners and scholars of higher education teaching. Rather than focus on whether SETs provide reliable measurements of quality, we explore what happens when SETs are implemented as or intended as quality development tools. We report from a qualitative study of how higher education teachers and managers perceive and use SETs as part of developing their own teaching, and focus on how the dialogue around teaching, which was intended as a part of the quality assessment procedure, is actualized (or not) in practice.