A Scholarly Approach to a Peer Review of Teaching,

From my POD listserv:

Joseph La Lopa (Perdue) responds to the Chronicle blog post advocating for eliminating student evaluations, and states that while he agrees that student evaluations of teaching should be done away with, he feels that a peer review of teaching would be a poor substitute (if it were a peer observation). His new publication, “A Scholarly Approach to a Peer Review of Teaching,” in Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 4, 2012, addresses this issue.

Abstract:

Due to their noted shortcoming, educators have looked to supplement student evaluation of teaching with other methods, one of which is a peer review of teaching. When done in a scholarly manner, a peer review of teaching is an excellent method by which to do a thorough audit of the way in which colleagues develop courses, deliver the content, and assess the results. Done poorly, a peer review of teaching has been shown to be less reliable than traditional student evaluations of teaching. This article summarizes the literature on peer review of teaching to assist those interested in conducting one in a scholarly manner in their academic units or those interested in doing research on the topic.