| In the beginning, there were no teaching evaluations. We inferred pedagogical quality from the acclaim individuals received from colleagues and students, based largely on testimony and hearsay. It was presumed that someone who gave insightful and interesting lectures to colleagues was also likely to be a good teacher. Institutional surveys of student opinion emerged out of the turmoil of the late 60s. Never intended to serve as professorial evaluations, they were the only tangible evidence of teaching effectiveness until some faculty opened their classrooms for observation by chairs and colleagues. Historically, the peer review of teaching has typically meant only that a faculty member has watched a colleague lead a class. An observation of an hour in the life of a course yields a letter describing the performance of a teacher, and that letter becomes the peer-review component of the professor’s teaching evaluation. Over the past couple of decades, the peer review of teaching has evolved significantly. During the 80’s, some faculty members began to assemble teaching portfolios from statements of teaching philosophies, syllabi, descriptions of course intent and content, reports of colleagues’ classroom observation, and summaries of student survey results. Since then specialists in assessment have conducted research on how peers can best capture the essence and complexity of a colleague’s teaching. Educational policy experts have analyzed the larger systems of evaluation in which peer reviews are embedded, identifying the conditions that optimize the usefulness of peer-generated comments. People of a practical bent have used the conceptual work done by scholars of education to forge guidelines and procedures that capture the best of these ideas in workable processes for teaching evaluation in all disciplines. This review will identify key resources for the sustainable practice of peer review of teaching. It will focus on peer review as an expert evaluation of a feature of teaching, such as the depth of understanding demonstrated by students’ work or the design of a course. This sense of peer review is akin to judgments made about manuscripts or funding proposals for editors or grant officers... When we describe teaching as serious intellectual work or scholarship, we need to prove that the products of teaching can also be rigorously evaluated for excellence by a community of peers. The challenge is even greater now than a decade ago, because there is a consensus today that to be successful, teaching must produce learning. As in the review of a research or creative project, merely documenting good practice is not enough; like research or art, teaching is judged in part based on its impact on the intended community. It will not be easy to meet that challenge, but the current body of work on peer review of teaching suggests that it is certainly possible for us to do so. A wide range of authors has generated both conceptual analyses of the process and practical guides for carrying it out, as well as suggestions for how to use peer feedback to generate improvement in teaching and learning over time. Both faculty members and our students will benefit from using these resources to guide our systems of professional accountability. |
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Resources: Bernstein, D., Burnett, A.N., Goodburn, A., & Savory, P. (2006). Making teaching and learning visible: Course portfolios and the peer review of teaching. Bolton, MA: Anker. Chism, Nancy V.N. (2007). Peer review of teaching: A sourcebook (2nd edition). Bolton MA: Anker. |
