Peer review of teaching: moving learning and teaching practice from the edge, by developing a public culture of academic practice

Abstract

The Faculty of the Professions at The University of Adelaide has developed an integrated program to support and enhance the learning and teaching skills, knowledge and practice of the academic and related staff who teach over 30% of the University’s students. The purpose is to develop a community of scholars supporting and promoting learning and teaching as a scholarly activity open to collegiate scrutiny, as is research. The focus is to move learning and teaching from a private sphere on the edge of scholarly activity to a central role, alongside research, as a public and influential scholarly activity of the university. While not significantly new, the challenge and novel dimension is to achieve this in a Go8 research intensive environment. In 2010 the Faculty introduced a pilot program of peer review of teaching, with its genesis in the ALTC funded project, Peer Review of Teaching for Promotion Purposes (June 2009). The pilot proposed a formative and mutual process to promote change and improvement, to enhance the quality of teaching through shared reflective collegial discussion as a key factor in both staff development, and student learning opportunities and experience. The role of peer review to enable and support personal development as a good University teacher, rather than for promotion or tenure purposes, was identified as a specific parameter. The Community of Practice was used to gauge the utility of the process. Through evaluation following the pilot, limitations, benefits and future applications in the Faculty’s particular environment, were identified.