Peer review in the university is not merely about judgement on the quality of teaching for promotion and tenure. Peer review is also about how faculty can be more effective colleagues to each other in improving their work as teachers and in building a community of scholars interested in the pursuit of academic excellence and continuous learning. There are some underlying assumptions behind the practice of peer review, namely learning, teaching and faculty roles.

Today, the concept of learning is closely associated with the promotion of a knowledge society where students learn not only by mastering information and facts but also by questioning to understand meaning and make connections. University classrooms are essentially communities of scholarly inquiry in which students interact with faculty and each other to engage in active learning.

Teaching for deeper understanding goes beyond form and technique. One assumption is that teaching is a scholarly activity, rooted in approaches to learning and thinking. Choices about course design, assignments given, and criteria for evaluating student learning are all reflections of how a teacher understands his/her field. Perhaps then, peer review should involve strategies that capture the scholarly substance of teaching.

Consequently, peer review must transcend classroom observation to include an assessment of the reflective reasoning behind the choices made in teaching. Does the peer review process then highlight faculty perceptions of their roles as members of the university community?

In January 1994, twelve American universities (including Purdue, Stanford, Northwestern and Syracuse) joined forces in a two-year American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) project to develop new prototypes for the peer review of teaching. Working together, the campuses selected pilot departments in eight fields – chemistry, mathematics, English, history, music, business, engineering, and nursing – and took into account the following factors:

• Student evaluations of teaching, though essential, are not enough as there are substantive aspects of teaching that only faculty can judge.
• Teaching entails learning from experience, a process that is difficult to pursue alone. Collaboration among faculty is essential to educational improvement.
• The regard of one’s peers is highly valued in academe; teaching will be considered a worthy scholarly endeavour – one to which large numbers of faculty will devote time and energy – only when it is reviewed by peers.
• Peer review puts faculty in charge of the quality of their work as teachers; as such, it promotes ownership as an alternative to more bureaucratic forms of accountability that would otherwise be imposed from outside academe.*

What the AAHE pilot projects proved was that peer review has to go beyond the classroom to be effective.

At Stanford, the History Department’s pilot programme institutionalised three components: the institution of a pedagogy colloquium for all academic job searches in the department; the introduction of teaching dossiers and peer evaluation into the department’s training cycle for graduate students; and the encouragement of course portfolios (case studies of course development and reflective memoranda) by faculty for peer exchange and commentary.

Stanford’s Mechanical Engineering Department chose to make the academic scholarship rewards and incentive architecture of the School of Engineering explicit and subject to peer review. The English Department had a very specific focus for its pilot project: the mentoring of junior faculty members in the department in a comprehensive and extensive manner to support them in all aspects of a successful academic career in the research university environment.

Learning from other universities’ experiences with peer review is one way to understand the significance and impact of the process. Setting up peer review mechanisms in the university can raise difficult issues. Faculty may find their comfort levels challenged as they try to decide on a role for peers in judging student learning. There is also a natural hesitancy in involving external peers while the time needed for peer review could be perceived as an area of concern. These are all valid issues that NUS must grapple with if it wants to implement peer review as an integral part of university teaching and learning.

In the business community, a comprehensive review technology known as the 360-degree feedback is revolutionising the way successful corporations are achieving business goals and enhancing work performance. The feedback exercise involves the collection of perceptions about a person’s behaviour and the impact of that behaviour from bosses, direct reports, colleagues, project team members, internal and external customers, and suppliers. The 360-degree feedback is acknowledged as a promoter of cultural change, employee excellence and effective teamwork. Perhaps, in the same way, peer review and student evaluation can be perceived as components of a 360-degree feedback equivalent for the university that aspires to educate graduates for a knowledge society through the building of a community of scholars.

* “AAHE Peer Evaluation of Teaching Project Overview and Update”, October 1994.