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Peer observation of teaching: a decoupled process

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-06-16, 12:48 authored by Martyn Chamberlain, Meriel D'Artrey, Deborah-Anne Rowe
This article details the findings of research into the academic teaching staff experience of peer observation of their teaching practice. Peer observation is commonly used as a tool to enhance a teacher's continuing professional development. Research participants acknowledged its ability to help develop their teaching practice, but they also reported that it could operate superficially as a tick box exercise, that its outcomes were frequently decoupled from formal staff development processes, and that its purpose and usefulness therefore seemed unclear. This article argues that the presence of decoupling reinforces the need to account for structural factors that can interact with peer observation of teaching to ensure it is a meaningful exercise for all teaching staff. It concludes that the published academic literature is perhaps guilty of overplaying the role of personal choice and individual tutor characteristics when addressing the complex issue that is staff disengagement with peer observation of teaching. © The Author(s) 2011.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Published in

Active Learning in Higher Education

Volume

12

Issue

3

Pages

189 - 201

Citation

CHAMBERLAIN, J.M., D'ARTREY, M. and ROWE, D.-A., 2011. Peer observation of teaching: a decoupled process. Active Learning in Higher Education, 12 (3), pp. 189 - 201.

Publisher

Sage Publications / © The Authors

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2011

Notes

This article was accepted for publication in the journal, Active Learning in Higher Education [Sage Publications / © The Authors]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469787411415083 .

ISSN

1469-7874

eISSN

1741-2625

Language

  • en