Peer review of teaching embedded practice or policy‐holding complacency?

Peer observation of teaching: A decoupled process

“…Nevertheless it also reinforces the suggestion that teachers may be wary of POT as they often feel it can be overly bureaucratic and possess an underlying competency-based judgemental ethos (Bell 2001;Threlfall and Smith 2001;Kell and Annetts 2009). Certainly research has shown that because of their worries teaching staff may seek to avoid it, or do it to comply with institutional policy, rather than because they view it as an opportunity for engaging in beneficial continuing professional development activity (Shorthand 2004).…”

“…Rather responsibility for its application and the management of outcomes is typically devolved down from an institutional to an individual level (McMahon et al 2007). Yet the literature remains inconclusive as to if staff anxiety and disengagement with the process in these circumstances is a matter of personal choice and individual teaching philosophy, or is due to other factors, such as having to juggle teaching workloads and research and publication demands (Kell and Annetts 2009).…”

“…But providing such support, guidance and training for all academic staff possesses resource implications beyond the ability of some higher education institutions to meet (Kell and Annetts 2009). It has been argued a more viable alternative would be to abandon the requirement for teaching practice to be observed altogether (although a teacher could still choose to be observed if they so wish) and instead require staff engage in a dialogue with a colleague concerning an area of their professional practice they wish to develop (Gosling and Mason O'Connor 2009).…”

“…It has been acknowledged that at present POT possesses two key problems because of its singular focus on the observation of teaching practice (Bell and Mladenovic 2008). First, a teacher may deliberately select a particular teaching session for observation that does not necessarily represent their usual teaching practice (Kell and Annetts 2009). They also may pick a "friendly face" to observe them as they know the feedback from this person will be positive (Bell 2001).…”

“…Furthermore its content is highly relevant to academics worldwide given growing international concern with economic performance management across the higher education sector as a result of the global recession. Not least of all because this may well yet result in an increased focus being placed on POT as a performance management and career progression tool (Kell and Annetts 2009). Gosling (2005) has suggested three POT models: 'evaluative', 'developmental' and 'collaborative'.…”