Peer Review (of Pedagogic Practice)

Overview

Peer review is familiar to most academics in the context of research and the submission of papers for publication. The notion of peer review can be extended across all activities and responsibilities of staff in higher education. What is important is that this type of review is carried out by a peer, a co-worker of equal status, as opposed to a ‘colleague’, a peer who may be of unequal status.

Peer review of teaching will use multiple sources of data, which may include, for example, peer observation (Peer observation), student evaluations, teaching materials, written feedback to students on their work, module and programme design documents or review papers. Information from these sources can therefore provide a comprehensive view of a person’s teaching responsibilities. Ideally peer review is a collaborative process in which the reviewer takes the role of ‘critical friend’ providing comment and feedback in discussion.

Often a peer will have an insider’s view, with similar experiences of courses and students. Discussions in peer review will often be of mutual benefit to reviewer and reviewed.

A very important element and explicit purpose of peer review is that it makes teaching ‘public’, that is, visible to others who support its development. It also endorses the status of teaching and subjects it to similar processes as research in higher education.

The University of Gloucester in the UK has re-interpreted peer review as Review of Professional Practice as a way of supporting and developing staff in teaching. You may be interested to look at the process:
http://www.glos.ac.uk/adu/clt/rpp/index.cfm

For a summary of how peer review has developed in the USA, see
Peer Review of Teaching in the USA - Vaneeta D'Andrea, TQEF National Co-ordination Team