Fostering Effective Peer Review of Teaching at BYU

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Fostering Effective Peer Review of Teaching at BYU

• Department Chair Seminar
• February, 2003
• Faculty Center

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Making the Case for Effective Peer Review of
Teaching

• Scholars unanimously agree that evaluating
  teaching
• is complex and requires many types and sources
  of evidenceFurthermore, consensus exists among
  experts that effective evaluation of teaching
  requires some combination evidence from the
  person whose teaching is being evaluated, from
  the persons students, and from professional
  colleagues
• The involvement of peers is too often limited
  to cursory visits to the classrooms of new
  faculty Real peer review informed peer
  judgments about faculty teaching for either
  improvement or judgment purposes is too often
  given short shrift.
• Nancy Van Note Chism, Peer Review of Teaching,
  1999, Preface

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Teaching as Community Property

• Noting that the culture of teaching in higher
  education settings has developed a strong norm of
  privacy, Lee Shulman points out that such a
  culture inhibits the growth of what Boyer has
  termed the scholarship of teaching, the
  thoughtful, problem solving, discipline-based
  approach to teaching that involves
• continual reasoning about instructional choices,
• awareness of the solutions that other scholars
  have made to key problems in facilitating student
  learning in the field, and
• active, ongoing research about the effects of
  instructor actions on student learning.
• Nancy Van Note Chism, Peer Review of Teaching,
  1999, p. 6

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Proposed Applications of Peer Reviews of Teaching
at BYU

• Summative peer reviews are required for all
  Rank and Status dossiers (3rd and 6th year
  reviews, Full Professor)
• Feedback to new faculty prior to R S summative
  evaluations is recommended

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Peer Review as Self-Regulation Within Professions

• The rationale for peer review of teaching is
  that the faculty must be continually engaged in
  discussing teaching in order both to nurture new
  teachers into the community of teacher-scholars
  and to render the process of making personnel
  decisions (who gets hired, who gets tenured, who
  gets merit pay, and the like) more open and more
  informed by reasoned decisions that consider
  teaching seriously.
• The idea of peer review of teaching is then
  in the spirit of both continuous quality
  improvement and the practice of self-regulation
  within professions.
• Nancy Van Note Chism, Peer Review of
  Teaching, 1999, p. 6

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Proposed Applications of Peer Reviews of Teaching
at BYU

• Formative reviews are encouraged on a broad
  basis within departments
• Foster a teaching-friendly culture in departments
• Seed conversations Good talk about good
  teaching

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Inviting and Expecting Conversation

• Good talk about good teaching is unlikely to
  happen if presidents and principals, deans and
  department chairs, and others who have influence
  without position, do not expect it and invite it
  into being.
• Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 156

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Why Require Peer Reviews for Rank and CFS?

• Peer evaluation is as important for teaching as
  it is for scholarship. R S policy
• Students are best qualified to evaluate the
  teaching process from the perspective of
  learners.
• Peers are best qualified to evaluate the content
  of a course from the perspective of the
  discipline. (Peers are also invited to observe
  teaching.)
• Written peer evaluations and student ratings form
  the core of the assessment of teaching at
  department, college and university levels.

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R S Summative Peer Evaluations (Section 3.2.2
R S Policy)

• Who Evaluates?
• Department chair / R S committee appoints
  qualified peer evaluators (2 per teacher)
• Peer evaluation report submitted to department
• What is Evaluated?
• R S candidate submits a teaching portfolio
  (course materials) with promotion packet
• Actual teaching is observed (optional, but
  recommended)

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Pre R S Formative Peer Reviews

• How to Balance Competing Needs?
• Separate formative and summative evaluation
  processes (e.g., different evaluators formal vs.
  informal developmental vs. evaluative)
• Connect formative evaluations with department
  decision makers (avoid inconsistent formative and
  summative evaluation results)

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Pre R S Formative Peer Reviews

• Some Suggestions / Ideas
• Use mentor assigned to new faculty
• Mentor explains department standards, summative
  review process
• Mentor gives formative feedback to new faculty
• Faculty member shares feedback with Chair during
  annual stewardship process (What I learned. What
  Im doing to improve.)
• Annual stewardship evaluation for new faculty
  member based on the same information as other
  faculty (hold out mentors comments)

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Anticipating Concerns About R S Peer Reviews

• POSSIBLE CONCERNS
• Lack of consensus on standards for judgment
• Teachers not aware of standards / expectations
• Peers not qualified to review particular course
  content
• Lack of systematic process and documentation

• POSSIBLE RESPONSES
• Departments agree on standards
• Effective course design
• Effective classroom performance
• Effective course materials
• Mentors explain standards to new faculty
• Teachers receive standards-based feedback prior
  to R S evaluations
• Careful selection of qualified reviewers
• Training provided for reviewers
• Embed standards in observation and evaluation
  forms
• Allow sufficient time for effective reviews
• Provide sample outline for final report

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Conclusions

• This is worth doing and worth doing well
• Worth doing
• Strengthens the teaching culture in departments
• Improves student learning
• Enhances the RS process
• Worth doing well
• Departments need to own their process
• Adapt general principles and guidelines to local
  needs / circumstances
• Anticipate concerns and address them, proactively
• Use campus resources learn from each other

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Reference Materials for Departments

• Peer Review of Teaching A Sourcebook, Nancy Van
  Note Chism (Bolton, MA Anker Publishing
  Company), 1999
• BYU Policy on Faculty Rank and Status (Section
  3.3.2) HANDOUT 1
• Sample peer evaluation tools (Faculty Center
  adaptations of Chism) HANDOUTS 2-3

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Lessons Learned

• Jay Fox English Departments Experiences with
  Peer Review of Teaching