Critical friends: a tool for quality improvement in universities

Quality programmes in higher education in Spain consist of a review to be conducted by a panel composed of external and internal members. These activities may contribute towards an improvement in teaching. However, we can use a number of complementary methods in order to evaluate teachers. The aim of this paper is to discuss the aspects that must be considered in order to succeed in the implementation of the critical friends technique to improve teaching, based on the experience of a group of six lecturers in a Spanish university.