Title: Peer Review of Teaching | Center for Teaching | Vanderbilt University
Headings: Center for
Teaching

Center for Teaching
Peer Review of Teaching
Introduction
What Is Peer Review?
Why Peer Review?
How to Select Peer Reviewers
How to Evaluate?
Content knowledge
Use of instructional materials
Class organization
Presentation form and substance
Teacher-Student interactions
Student participation
Assessment practices
Content knowledge
Clear and effective class organization
Varied methods for engagement, which may include…
Presentation
Teacher-Student Interactions
Appropriateness of instructional materials
Student engagement
Support of departmental/program/school instructional efforts
In-class, formative assessment practices
Out-of-class, summative assessment practices
Evidence of Student Learning.
Possible Limitations of Peer Review?
Concluding Thoughts
Bibliography

Content: Greater faculty experimentation and rigor. Just as importantly, an over-reliance on student evaluations in processes of professional review can cause faculty to become overly concerned about receiving positive student evaluations. In the worst of moments, this can lead faculty to adopt a consumer model of education, shaping our teaching to meet the needs of students over the needs of our disciplines or institutions (Hutchings 1996). This, in turn, results in faculty becoming overly cautious by refusing to challenge student expectations by using conventional teaching methods, by becoming less rigorous in their standards, and at worst, by feeling a need to entertain more than educate. Peer review, when done in formative and summative forms alongside student evaluations, can ensure both faculty and students will have a voice in their evaluation, and that faculty have greater autonomy to innovate and to teach rigorously. This can give faculty the opportunity to focus more intentionally on what helps students learn best, and therefore more directly focus on the quality of their teaching. Allows for both formative and summative evaluation. When done well, peer review involves both formative and summative evaluations. The inclusion of greater formative evaluation allows for more significant faculty and instructional development by encouraging more critical reflection on teaching and by providing a safer, less risky, and more collegial setting for assessment. Improves faculty approaches to teaching.