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The “Colleague Review of Teaching” programme (CRT) aimed to enhance reviewees’ confidence to teach. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Case studies using mixed-method, interview and questionnaire, repeated measures intervention were employed whereby academics in an Australian university science faculty volunteered to participate in a multi-faceted teaching review programme. Underpinned by confidence and self-determination theory, the CRT included peer coach training, reviewee choice, and a strengths-based approach to peer reviewing and coaching colleagues.

The reviewees declared an enhanced confidence to teach, teaching skills and unit design knowledge in an environment that was supportive of psychological needs. The peer coaches reported the CRT to be a positive experience that should continue. The strengths-based approach to peer observation of teaching and peer coaching facilitated department collegiality and was positively received by all participants who completed the programme.

The indifferent response to the CRT protocol completion reconfirms that peer review is a complex science and needs careful negotiation.

Review, peer coach and mentor training, review practice, choice protocols and the multi-faceted approach (pre-observation meeting, observations, written report and post-observation meeting) were positively received.

This paper provides rich insight into the experiences of a teaching review process.

To provide a best practice framework for peer review via teaching observation as a method of appraising teaching performance within UK higher education (HE) institutions.

The paper uses secondary data analysis via the current literature on peer review and peer appraisal, as well as use of primary data obtained via the design, implementation and analysis of semi‐structured interviews with management and teaching staff within the Faculty of Business and Management Science within a fictitiously named Riverbank University.

Provides a best practice framework for peer review based on the literature, where the case study university benchmarks well against the framework and an insight into the perceptions of teaching staff on the scheme.

The sample of 40 teaching staff was from only one faculty, in one university. Before generalising the findings it would be prudent to widen the research to include a larger sample from more universities across the HE sector in the UK.

The research has massive implications for the UK HE sector if peer review is to be used as a method of assessing teaching performance.

The paper is valuable as a guide to senior management wishing to implement a peer observation scheme within their own institution.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) mentorship has been identified as an important component of professional identity formation in higher education (HE). This may be especially true for education-focused or teaching stream (TS) faculty to thrive in times of changing organizational structures and work environments. The purpose of this paper is to present a critical reflection on the experiences in a faculty P2P mentoring for teaching program and considers the ways in which such programs can influence professional identity formation among TS academics.

In this paper, a matched faculty mentorship pair from Nursing and Chemistry disciplines uses critical reflection as a process of inquiry to interpret their experiences of building and sustaining an effective mentoring relationship as part of the P2P program, and to consider implications for professional identity formation and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Through the P2P program, the authors discovered that establishment of clear goals, a commitment to teaching and mentoring processes, and a mutual desire to build a relationship based on authenticity and reciprocity resulted in positive short- and long-term impacts on instructional practices. Professional identity was strengthened through intentional engagement and the opportunity to connect with like-minded peers, contributing to a renewed sense of confidence and commitment.

Interest in examining professional identity formation in HE has been growing over the past decade. This paper is novel in the critical reflection on a structured peer mentorship initiative through the lens of professional identity formation, with implications for planning and executing mentoring programs for TS faculty.

This paper aims to describe an internal quality enhancement system based on peer reviewing and summarizes the first results of application at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences.

A peer review framework has been developed to evaluate and further develop the teaching programs and practices. The questionnaire-based peer review program included 22 courses and involved almost 100 lecturers. Peer review outcomes are completed by end-of-semester student course evaluations.

The results allow us to map differences between lecturers and courses and to identify correlations between the assessment criteria applied for peer reviewing.

The implemented framework implies individual, faculty and organizational development to enhance a deeper understanding of how to create quality in teaching programs and processes. Secondly, the peer review program contributes to the establishment of a learning community with a growing common understanding of what is considered good quality in business education.

The paper is valuable as a guide to faculty management wishing to implement a peer review framework within their own institution. The novelty of the presented approach is that it focuses on a semester-long teaching performance including classroom performance, course outlines, teaching materials, course requirements and processes and means of student performance assessments.

This paper aims to explore academics’ perspectives on the quality of appraisal evidence at a Chinese university.

An online survey with both closed items and open-ended questions was distributed among all academics at the university (n = 1,538). A total of 512 responded to the questionnaire. The closed items were initially analysed using EXCEL and SPSS; the open-ended questions were thematically analysed.

The academics believed that the quality of student survey and peer observation of teaching were affected by subjectivity and the lack of understanding of appraisal. Academics also suggested that appraisals should be contextualised and the approach standardised. The study suggests the need for training that informs and engages relevant stakeholders to ensure the rigour of appraisal.

The study raises the issue of quality assurance regarding appraisal data from the perspective of academics. It is based on the collaborative effort of academics in Australia, China and New Zealand, with the support of the management staff at the case study university. The study informs both appraisers and academics of quality assurance issues in appraisal. It also contributes to the literature, in that it initiates dialogues between communities of practices through collective questioning on the quality and mechanisms of appraisal in tertiary education.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on observation of teaching in a Higher Education (HE) context with a view to proposing some guidelines for the design and practice of institutional systems to observe teaching.

A literature review and a proposed model for a system of observation of teaching with practical suggestions for managing the process and the information that results from implementation.

Practice in this area across the HE sector remains patchy and frequently cursory, despite the benefits that may follow from implementation of such systems, namely improved teaching and thus student learning.

This article synthesises best practice guidelines and proposes a three‐stage process to be adopted to help ensure that lecturers (and their students) gain the maximum benefit from being observed.

This chapter focusses on the complexity of observation, considering its role in lesson study, following a broader discussion of how observation is generally understood in teaching contexts. The authors argue that lesson study observation is formative and should not be performative in focus. In lesson study cycles, observation is a process conducted among peers ideally in a spirit of mutual support and collaborative inquiry, seeking to find answers to pedagogic challenges rather than measuring the effectiveness of individual teachers.

This study examined the value of using near-peer video-based feedback to help train aspiring school leaders in coaching strategies. This research is part of a larger study in which feedback was solicited from both aspiring teachers and aspiring school leaders. The current study focused on the responses provided by the aspiring school leaders.

This study utilized a phenomenological design. Undergraduate students enrolled in a public university in the Southwestern United States were recorded delivering instruction during their final semester of student teaching. These videos were uploaded to a secure website using EdPuzzle. Graduate students aspiring to be principals who were enrolled in a supervision course at the same university observed these classroom videos and provided feedback.

In regard to what participants learned about using video recordings, responses of aspiring principals fell into three themes as follows: establishing trust, providing critical feedback and broadening perspectives.

This study is limited by it being a small-scale study conducted at one public university in the Southwestern United States. Accordingly, the findings of this study are limited in their generalizability.

This study highlights the usefulness of collaborations between educator preparation programs and principal preparation programs to enhance the learning of both student groups.

This research adds to the small but growing body of literature regarding near-peer video-based feedback and its potential value in helping aspiring principals practice coaching skills using written feedback.

Reviews a research project which examines a small team of lecturers participating in peer observation of teaching performance. Provides a review of background literature from which this project was derived. Includes details of the model adopted and the process from the first meeting with the relevant head of department, induction of team members, the programme of visits, to a review by the team members. Considers how such a scheme could be implemented in institutions of higher education and concludes that teachers observed should be provided with a summary derived from the observed visits. A teaching portfolio can then be built up to use at the staff appraisal interview to justify good teaching performance in the classroom.