For a True Culture Shift in Teaching, Colleges Need to Reform More Than Just the Peer-Review Process

Most academics agree that the current system for evaluating colleagues’ work in the classroom is flawed and desperately needs an overhaul.

A recent essay in The Chronicle, “How Peer Review Could Improve Our Teaching,” offers clear guidance on improving one aspect of that system: peer review of teaching. The authors suggest ways to overcome many entrenched, unproductive habits that make the current peer review process feel unsatisfactory and, at times, even punitive or hurtful.

I want this conversation to go beyond the authors’ point that “we can do better” at peer review. Indeed, we can. I fully support their recommendations to consider the full scope of an instructor’s teaching (not just in-class time), to institutionalize regular classroom observations, and to position peer review as a formative process. However, for a true culture shift in teaching to occur, departments and institutions need to reform peer review and the many related practices. Peer review is part of a more extensive network of evaluative customs, all of which should be critically examined, reformed, and aligned with each other.

As noted in the peer-review essay, many campuses still use “outdated, cursory methods of evaluating teaching that is uninformative, ad hoc, and subject to bias.” To bring about deep and lasting change, I propose the following additional reforms that intersect with peer review:

  1. Revise Department Handbooks and Faculty Manuals to Be More Specific About Teaching. Just as vague letters of recommendation from dissertation advisers—“Although I have not personally seen Dr. Smith teach, she is the best graduate student I have worked with in the past five years”—are essentially useless, so too are generic statements from campuses about valuing “teaching excellence.” If hired, where does Dr. Smith turn for guidance on what that elusive quality looks like and how to demonstrate it during the tenure and promotion process?To be more effective, department and faculty manuals should provide detailed guidance on what constitutes effective teaching and outline how it can be assessed and demonstrated. These handbooks could:
    • Break down teaching effectiveness into specific categories. For example, does the course intellectually challenge students? Does the faculty member communicate effectively, commit to student learning, and stay current in their discipline?
    • List various methods for assessing teaching effectiveness beyond peer review and end-of-term evaluations. Additional methods could include teaching portfolios, evidence of pedagogical innovation, and engagement with students outside the classroom.
    • Most importantly, the faculty manual should explicitly state how student course evaluations will (and will not) be used in annual reviews, tenure decisions, and promotions and include a disclaimer about potential biases in these surveys.
  2. Reward Good Teaching. Institutions should put their money where their mouth is by ensuring that teaching effectiveness is adequately recognized within their reward systems. Many outstanding teachers have been denied tenure for not publishing enough, while many full professors with active research agendas struggle in the classroom.Faculty members will always have different strengths, but institutions can take steps to counter the message that outdated practices send: that teaching excellence doesn’t truly matter in academia.

    The allocation of an institution’s resources typically reflects its values. Teaching excellence will hold more weight if your campus:

    • Offers significant merit grants and sabbatical leaves for faculty members engaged in course development and pedagogical innovation.
    • Establishes alternative tenure and promotion pathways for faculty dedicated to teaching and service.
    • Awards are more substantial monetary prizes for annual teaching awards than for research awards. (At my college, the annual faculty prize for scholarship comes with $1,000, while the annual teaching award is $5,000.)
  3. Focus Course-Evaluation Surveys on Student Learning, Not Faculty Performance. End-of-semester evaluations that ask students to rate a professor’s effectiveness on a Likert scale (“The instructor effectively explained and illustrated course concepts.”) offer little help in improving teaching. At best, they provide generic feedback, and at worst, they can be demoralizing and damaging, particularly for faculty of color and women, who are more likely to receive negative comments about their appearance and expertise, as research shows.If course evaluations are required, they should be designed to be more helpful. Ask students to reflect on their understanding of the material, the quality of the reading assignments, the level of challenge in the course, and even their performance during the semester. This approach encourages students to take responsibility for their learning and provides faculty with more specific feedback to improve their classroom environment.
  4. Allow Students to Provide Feedback During the Semester. Please encourage students to share their thoughts on how a class is progressing while there is still time for feedback to impact their learning. End-of-term evaluations do little to improve teaching since the results come too late—after students have left the class and faculty are preoccupied with planning for the next term or enjoying a summer of research. Some institutions have experimented with midterm check-ins—an idea first proposed in the 1970s—that ask students to reflect on the learning environment of the course.Here’s how mid-semester check-ins work at the honors college where I am dean:
    • About eight weeks into the term, faculty members allocate an hour for this exercise. The professor organizes students into small groups and then leaves the room.
    • Each group discusses (a) the two to three most important things they should be learning in the course, (b) the specific activities that help them learn, (c) strategies that could make the classroom more effective, and (d) two to three steps they could take to improve their learning.
    • After the discussions, the groups report their findings. A student discussion leader helps the class reach a consensus on the points and records them on the whiteboard.
    • The class is dismissed once the data is collected, and the discussion leader walks the faculty member through the feedback.

    Having used this strategy in my courses, I am continually impressed by the thoughtfulness of the responses, the student’s willingness to take responsibility for their role in the learning process, and the specificity of their comments. It is always gratifying as an instructor to hear what’s working in your classroom—and what isn’t—and to have the time to address those issues. Students also feel valued and appreciate having a say in the direction of the course for the rest of the semester.

  5. Organize New Faculty Hires into Communities of Practice Focused on Teaching. While we have made significant progress over the past few decades in recognizing that great teachers are developed, not born, the myth of the naturally gifted teacher persists. We can dismantle this harmful stereotype by fostering the growth of new faculty members in their teaching roles.To show that your institution values the development of teaching skills and is committed to supporting them, invite new faculty members to join a yearlong learning community centered on teaching and learning. These communities could:
    • Help new faculty develop specific teaching skills.
    • Provide a space for confidential conversations about first-year classroom struggles.
    • Offer opportunities for low-stakes classroom observations.
    • Create chances to hear from senior professors about their successful teaching strategies.
    • Facilitate discussions on common readings, such as bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress, James M. Lang’s Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons From the Science of Learning, or Therese Huston’s Teaching What You Don’t Know, among many other excellent choices.

All of these practices align with the peer review of teaching. A reimagined peer-review process that affirms teaching excellence as a core institutional value is essential. However, peer review is just one tool among many that can help us build a vibrant culture of continuous improvement in teaching practices.