Abstract

This paper highlights Faculty Development (FD) definition, its creation and evolution, approaches, main strategies and content, systematic reviews, and study on its effectiveness. FD started at Michigan State University (USA) at the beginning of the Sixties. Rapidly in many North American universities and colleges, Teaching and Learning Centers were created to support those teachers who were interested in innovative teaching and learning methods. In the Seventies POD was created, a network for professional and organizational development in higher education, which groups many university Teaching and Learning Centres. In Italy Faculty Development started for Medical Education in the Eighties with the support of Smith Kline Foundation, a World Health Organization collaborating centre, and then was developed by Italian Society of Medical Education. Faculty Development for all other University teachers started in 2015 with University of Padova’s PRODID project. In 2019 a survey, led by the University of Genoa, revealed that there are more than forty Italian Universities which have implemented Faculty Development activities for their university teachers in the last three years.