Faculty Perceived Barriers and Attitudes Toward Peer Review of Classroom Teaching in Higher Education Settings

Abstract

Peer review of teaching (PRT) is one of the various assessment methods employed to assess teaching effectiveness. The current meta-synthesis aims to summarize the faculty perceived barriers and attitudes toward PRT process. A systematic search was done across a range of databases, with 26 studies being found acceptable for data extraction. Because all the data were presented in narrative form only, no statistical test was applied to assess the significance, difference, or association between the variables. A thematic analysis was performed, which identified the following significant issues: the importance of the involvement of teaching experts in the PRT process, the content of PRT and quality of feedback, objectives associated with PRT, and faculty perceived barriers to PRT. Overall, it is shown that academic culture, time-related issues, and the need for restructured PRT guidelines are common barriers to a willingness to participate in PRT.Keywords peer review of teaching, quality of feedback, academic culture, thematic analysis, faculty perceived barrier

Moving Beyond Peer Review of Teaching: A Conceptual Framework for Collegial Faculty Development

“…Because the target literature identified in previous reviews (Teoh et al, 2016; Thomas et al, 2014) is largely composed of qualitative or mixed-methods studies, we consider this review method as particularly well suited for addressing our research questions. A theory-informed synthesis of qualitative findings facilitates the study of the complex relations and processes involved in CFD.…”

“…Table 1 provides an illustration of the final parameters. Additional references found in previous review studies and handbooks were included in the initial set (Chism, 1999; Klopper & Drew, 2015; Sachs & Parsell, 2013; Teoh et al, 2016; Thomas et al, 2014). The initial 981 database hits were exported to an Excel file, where the first author completed the initial screening for duplicates and by title.…”

“…In line with this growing interest, numerous researchers have started to empirically study approaches to CFD. Close scrutiny of the articles analyzed by two previous review studies on CFD (Teoh et al, 2016; Thomas et al, 2014) reveals that much of the existing research is characterized by single-intervention studies and practitioners’ reflections that focus on identifying benefits, problems, and best practices when using peers to develop teaching quality. Thomas et al (2014) discussed how the scarcity of systematic empirical studies makes it difficult to parse the effectiveness of different CFD practices.…”

“…Though some groupings exist around labels such as "peer review of teaching" (PRT) and "peer observation of teaching" (POT), these terms are often used without reference to commonly accepted definitions. Even though the reviews by Thomas et al (2014) and Teoh et al (2016) have provided important insights into PRT and POT, their focus on these specific terms led to the exclusion of a wide range of relevant studies that describe CFD practices but use alternative labels. In addition, these reviews took more practice-oriented approaches by focusing on faculty's perceived barriers and attitudes toward PRT (Teoh et al, 2016) and exploring strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats when conducting PRT (Thomas et al, 2014).…”

Board 135: DIY Classroom Observations: A Toolkit for Novice Classroom Observers

“…Toeh, Ming, and Khan [8] performed a thematic analysis on 26 studies to identify important issues in the area of peer review of teaching. Four major themes were identified: a) importance of involving teaching experts during the peer review process, b) peer review content and feedback quality, c) peer review objectives, and d) perceived barriers to peer review.…”