December 25, 2024 • 38 mins
Peer observation and peer feedback can be useful resources for faculty professional development. In this episode, Anna Logan, Ann Marie Farrell, and Martina Crehan join us to discuss a cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary peer observation process. Anna is an Associate Professor in the School of Inclusive and Special Education and the former Dean of Teaching and Learning at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University. Ann Marie is an Assistant Professor, also in the School of Inclusive and Special Education at Dublin City University. Martina is Head of Teaching Enhancement Unit at Dublin City University. She has over 20 years experience in professional development and as a curriculum innovator.
A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.
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Peer observation and peer feedback can be useful resources for faculty professional development.
In this episode, we examine a cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary peer observation process.
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective
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practices in teaching and learning. This podcast series is hosted by
John Kane, an economist... ...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more
inclusive and supportive of all learners.Our guests today are Anna Logan, Ann Marie
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Farrell, and Martina Crehan. Anna is an Associate Professor in the School of Inclusive and Special
Education and the former Dean of Teaching and Learning at the Institute of Education,
Dublin City University. Ann Marie is an Assistant Professor, also in the School of Inclusive and
Special Education at Dublin City University. Martina is Head of Teaching Enhancement Unit
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at Dublin City University. She has over 20 years experience in professional development
and as a curriculum innovator. Welcome back, Anna and Ann Marie and welcome Martina.
Hi. Thanks for having us back. It's good to see you again. Today's
teas are:... Anna, what tea do you have today?Today I am having a very traditional Barry's
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Red Label tea. Barry's is a very famous Irish tea from County Cork. So I'm having that.
And Ann Marie?I am having an earl grey
tea today. That's actually my favorite tea. So that's what I'm having this afternoon.
And Martina?So I've gone a little bit
more exotic with a rooibos tea. So it makes me think of beautiful warm blue skies.
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And I have an English afternoon today,And I have… something I missed out last
time… an Irish breakfast tea today, I would have had Barry’s if I was able to get back
to the office this morning, but it's a Twinings, but at least it's Irish breakfast this time.
at least the right part of the world, John. So we've invited you here today to discuss your joint
work in setting up a cross-institutional process of peer observation of teaching. Can you tell us a
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little bit about the origins of this project?Thanks, Rebecca. So this project was a
collaboration between three Irish universities, Dublin City University, Maynooth University and
RCSI, and our story began, hard to believe now, actually, as far back as 2017 and it started with
a conversation between myself and two colleagues who worked as faculty developers in three
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institutions. Have to mention my co-conspirators here, Muireann O’Keeffe and Morag Munro,
and we'd all been involved in peer observation of teaching work in one form or another in our
respective institutions. We were very aware of how valuable a tool it could be in scaffolding
professional dialog and reflection and practice, and we became very interested in the potential
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for cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary peer observation. A lot of the literature at the
time was very focused on peer observation of teaching in a single institution, but we were
coming across more and more publications which really focused on the power of cross-disciplinary
and cross-institutional. We were really lucky to have some funding at the time that was available
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via a partnership between the three institutions. So we initiated a pilot scheme. We focused it on
large-group teaching as the common focus for the participants, and designed a process where
we supported the participants with an induction. We also supported them in terms of the observation
process itself, reflection, professional conversations and so on. And we sought volunteers,
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and were really lucky to be joined by, I think, 10 volunteers across the three institutions from
a range of different backgrounds, two of whom were Ann Marie and Anna, and I think they might want to
speak about their motivations for joining us.Well, from my perspective, I was just very
interested immediately by the idea of having an opportunity to work with somebody outside of DCU,
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outside of my own university. And my background is teaching. I was originally a primary school
teacher, and so that's my background. And since I've been working in higher education,
I've been really interested in the pedagogical aspect of my work. So when the invitation went
out, it just seemed like something that was really interesting to me, and it fitted in
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with some of the work I was already doing. So that's what motivated me to join up.
And I love teaching. And of course, this was something that was focused on teaching. I think
Martina might have mentioned that it was focused on large-class teaching, which was something that
I was really interested in. So that was another motivating factor. When I read a little bit
about it, or was approached, the structure and the opportunity to engage in reflection on my
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teaching, particularly the teaching in a large class, was really useful. I am very committed to
improving my teaching all the time, and I really was motivated by the opportunity that I could
identify aspects of my teaching that I had a hunch weren't great, that I was a little bit concerned
about my pacing, for example, and so I knew this would give me potentially a good opportunity to
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get feedback on that and develop my skills in terms of teaching those large classes.
When we do peer evaluation of teaching on our campus, it could be for formative purposes,
but it's often more for summative evaluation, which is perhaps not the most useful form of peer
observation, and I really like the idea of having people from other institutions observe teaching,
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because it takes away any possibility of that type of summative evaluation. Have people appreciated
that aspect, that they’re getting reactions from people outside their campus who will
not be involved, even indirectly, in evaluating their teaching for retention or other purposes.
From my perspective as a participant in the cross-institutional peer observation of teaching
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project, it was absolutely fantastic to have somebody coming from a completely different
context who didn't know one single thing about the culture and the ideas and the way we do things,
even generally as an institution, never mind specifically, in my classroom. And I was paired up
with a guy who was teaching a completely different subject area and he was doing something around
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digital media and literacy for trainee doctors at RCSI, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland,
so it's a medical university in its entirety. So he was coming from a completely different
perspective, and even when we visited each other's institutions, that was really useful. Like one
of his comments is, a lot of my students are all student teachers, they're all resident in Ireland,
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most of them go home at the weekends, whereas his students were mostly International, maybe
went home once a year. So he was very struck. He came in to see me on a Friday morning, and there
were about 40 suitcases lined up at the door as the students were coming to my session, and
then were running for buses to go home. And he was struck by that, and even just the profile of the
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class. So what's really useful about that kind of cross-institutional thing is that you see your own
students, your own organization, in a much broader context. And I think that does influence how you
view Teaching and Learning then as well. And I absolutely agree with Ann Marie's
observations in relation to that. I also think that the cross-disciplinary nature that Ann Marie
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has highlighted was really very, very important. And coming back to your observation, John,
that this really wasn't about summative assessment, this was about mentoring and
peer support and mutual peer support. I was paired with somebody from a business background, so I was
visiting and observing in a large undergraduate business classroom. And it struck me at the time
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that I was authentically a learner in that place. There wasn't a competition. I wasn't going in with
my lens as a teacher educator with a particular interest in inclusive and special education. So
it was, I suppose, in a way, less competitive. And maybe this wasn't a conscious thing, it wasn't,
“how do they do it in this institution?” Because it was an entirely different discipline. It meant
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I was an authentic learner about leadership and management education, and hopefully,
I think my peer was equally a learner in my classroom about inclusive education. So I
think it was both the cross-institutional and the cross-disciplinary which really supported
that mutual peer support aspect, rather than somebody coming in in an evaluative summative
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role. It wasn't designed as such, and it didn't slip into that space because we were in different
disciplines and in different institutions.I think generally as well, just to add to that,
John, in Ireland, in higher education, probably for the most part, we're quite
lucky where peer observation of teaching in most institutions has maintained that
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very formative developmental aspect. It's actually very rarely used here in that much more summative,
evaluative way. So I think we're very lucky from that perspective. But as I was listening to Anna
and Ann Marie speaking there, I'm not sure if somebody used this phrase in some of the research
that we've conducted on this, but I remember somebody talking about the cross-institutional
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and the cross-disciplinary piece allowed you to tune into a different frequency of teaching and
learning. And I thought that was just a lovely way of summarizing all of that which kind of resonated
with me and has stayed with me, I have to say.One of the things that I heard you both speaking
about is being a non-expert in a classroom on the subject matter, which helps you be in the
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classroom as a learner, and probably helps you give really different feedback on the teaching of
your peer, in a different way than if you are an expert on the subject matter, which I find to be
really interesting and really helpful. And I know that when I've had the opportunity to be in other
classrooms of different disciplines, have found to be one of the most exciting and rich experiences
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as an observer is to be in those really different disciplines: (A) because it's really interesting
to learn something new, but (B) because the methodologies are often really different and
give you some really interesting and new ideas. I'm interested to hear a little bit more about
some of the logistics of how this process was put in place, because you're talking a little
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bit about visiting the different institutions and coordinating three different organizations,
and that sounds like a really complex situation to put together. Can you talk
a little bit about what that was like for both the organizers as well as the participants.
So, I think we were very lucky in that, from my perspective, from an organizational point of view,
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I had a colleague in each of the other institutions who was as enthusiastic
and as motivated in this. So from a logistical perspective, we kind of shared the organization,
and we shared the locations for some of the induction workshops and some of the conversations
that we needed to have with the participants, which Anna and Ann Marie will be able to talk
to you about from their perspective and as a participant. We took the responsibility
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of matching the individuals, so that made it, I think, a little bit easier for the participants,
and then it was really up to them to organize: When will I visit? What day? What time? How will (11:44):
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that work out? So we left that in the hands of the participants so that they could make their own
decisions, and hopefully that made it a little bit easier for them. So I think from the organization
point of view, the logistics were possibly maybe a little bit easier than for the participants.
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Well, from a participant's perspective, I just found it was really well structured.
So we had like a planning or a support day with Martina, Muireann, and Morag at the beginning
of the process, where they went through models of reflective practice. They went through principles
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of the type of feedback, or considerations we as participants needed to take into consideration
when we were working with our partner, like, for example, establishing ground rules with
your partner in terms of what the nature of the feedback, maybe what you would request
as feedback that the person being observed might ask for particular feedback and so on. So it was
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just really well supported from the outset, and then when Martina then sent us off in our pairs,
I linked in with my partner, and we had at least one, if not two, phone conversations,
and that was to agree when we were going to meet, who was going to go where and when, basic things,
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like giving directions, all of that sort of thing. And then when we met, we gave each other a tour
of each other's University. And that was really interesting, and it broke the ice. It was a lovely
kind of, I suppose, relationship-building thing, like we spent a little time in both institutions
before we did the feedback or the observation or whatever. And in our case, the chap I was paired
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with came and observed two of my classes. He asked could he come and see a second one? And I said,
“Yes,” I was delighted. His classes were mainly completed at that point in the semester,
but he had recorded them, so I watched one of his recordings, and then we sat down in terms
of feedback. And it was interesting, because I was far more nervous about giving feedback
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than I was about receiving it, because I am a teacher educator. I go out to schools all the
time. I'm constantly giving feedback on teaching, and that's a very particular context in terms of
going out to one of our students who's doing a course. But this was different. So I didn't want
to become the teacher educator. I wanted it to be equal. So I was quite nervous actually about
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giving the feedback. But the whole process of the actual observations and the feedback was just so
collegial. It was eye opening, like he saw things that he could only see because he was sitting at
the top of the room, and I do walk around when I'm in a tiered lecture theater. I walk around,
but I cannot sit down at the back for 30 minutes or an hour and watch, whereas he did, and he had
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very interesting things to say about what students were doing while class was going on. So that
actual process of the two of us working together, I just found it really, really, really useful.
So that was my main takeaway around that.My experience was different. You asked about
the process, John, so just talking about the process, my experience of the process was
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slightly different. Yes, there was that initial face-to-face workshop, which was really useful.
But there was a flexibility in this. Even though it was structured, there was quite a
lot of flexibility. Martina said, after that first day, it was really handed over to us in our pairs
to work it out. And I think one of the things that was great about it was the flexibility, because we
had to be quite flexible, my partner and I, for a number of reasons. First of all, my partner hadn't
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been able to come to that initial first day, so Ann Marie mentioned the kind of the building and
the breaking the ice. So actually, we had to do that. I was on Skype at the time, because
this was before COVID and I certainly wasn't comfortable in Skype. I'd never used it before,
so there was quite a lot there, but we had a long conversation and a long getting to know you chat
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on Skype, which did help us to break that barrier. Now again, Ann Marie, you mentioned the logistics
of when this would happen in the academic year, when it would happen in the semester. So there
were constraints to do with that which are to do with when a module started, when it ended.
So I was very fortunate in that my partner was still teaching at that time, so I could get out
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and go to her university. Again, we built in time to have a chat, as Ann Marie had said,
while we had to do it on Skype again, we were very clear about what we wanted feedback on, and I
would totally relate to Ann Marie's observation. I'm really used to giving feedback. I was very
much conscious of stepping away from that. And again, it was a different discipline and so on. So
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I went out to and I observed the lecture live in a large lecture theater, and we had our feedback
session after that, but it was a bit different for me, because my teaching in that particular module
was in blocks, and it just didn't suit my partner to come out. But again, as Ann Marie said, we
could record. So I recorded the session and shared the recording with my partner, and then we came
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together again online and had our conversation. So the flexibility was great in terms of the process,
and that structure at the beginning, clear guidelines, ground rules, all that sort of thing.
Then flexibility was really important. Because if it had had to be you have to see a face-to-face
lecture, or it has to happen within a certain period of time, there was that flexibility which
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made it very achievable too, I think, for usNow, you've already addressed some of this in
terms of your responses, Anna and Ann Marie, but have you heard any other responses from
faculty in terms of the general reaction to this process? Has it been popular? Have people
been anxious or concerned about it? How have faculty, more broadly, responded to this.
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I can address this to some extent from the perspective of the pilot project, and then
maybe other forms of peer observation within single institutions which I've been involved
in. And I think for many people, particularly when they start on this process, it's a mixture of fear
trepidation, a sense of the unknown. What am I signing up to? What am I jumping into? Because
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realistically, you know, for most of us in any teaching context, we go into our lecture theater,
our classroom, our lab, and we close the door. It's us and the students. So that concept of
having somebody sit at the back of the classroom or the front of the classroom and observe us
is challenging, and I think particularly in an Irish context, it puts us in mind of the cigire,
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which is our Irish word for inspector, who might come in, particularly if we're in teacher training
as primary level or second level, will come in and assess us in that more evaluative way. So it
is certainly daunting for people at the start, so the structures and the supports that we put around
it are really, really key in that. And one of the things that participants usually respond to quite
well is that sense of support, the fact that it is developmental, that it is not something that
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is evaluative, that judgments are being made on, and the fact that there is a reciprocity.
So if I'm paired with Anna, then she will come into my classroom, I'll go into her classroom.
And the philosophy is really centered around a conversation about our teaching and learning
practice. And I think once people have experienced that for the first time and get that sense of
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the philosophy and the ethos, it really kind of helps that progression, and it helps that
sense of comfort and that sense of familiarity. So for the most part, I mean, there are people,
I think, who probably feel a little bit more challenged about it for a longer period of time,
but I think having those supports in place are really, really key to ensuring that participants
engage in this in a productive and a positive way and see it as something that helps their practice
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and is going to develop their practice. And I suppose, from my perspective, since
engaging in that pilot project, I've invited a lot of people into my class for a variety of reasons,
and sometimes not about the teaching and learning piece, but more about the content. So I've
invited staff in if they so wished, if we've guest speakers, or if I'm in doing a session on special
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and inclusive education, other teacher educators who might be interested. And sometimes we do have
some other members of faculty who come in and join for some of those and that’s not quite the same
thing, but I would be much more confident in doing that now, and I also think it is really important
for very new members of staff. I think for the most part, new lecturers are thrown in teaching.
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They're the one group of teachers who perhaps do not have a teaching qualification, and they're
in what are arguably some of the most complex situations and some peer observation of teaching,
but maybe initially, one way where new members of staff can come in and be invited in to observe
large-class teaching, just to help them get off the ground themselves, or that has, in my case,
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morphed into co-teaching, where somebody has come in initially a new member of staff has
come in to observe, and that's then kind of the teaching, and that very large class context,
in my instance, is supported then in a very collegial, safe way, before they get up and
stand in front of 400 students on their own. So it can lead to that. I suppose it's like having
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an open-door policy. And it might start off as one way, but if the person ends up co-teaching one or
two sessions with you, actually, you can then talk about teaching and learning in that context and
give feedback to both of us, rather than the person, in terms of evaluating how the
class went or whatever. So it has potential way beyond just two people observing each other.
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So Martina, you mentioned that this was a pilot project. Is this something that
you're hoping to continue across the three institutions and expand beyond a pilot?
I think we would love to. Obviously, there are very fundamental issues like funding, which impact
future plans in this regard. So certainly we would love to continue. We'd love to expand. I think,
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as the three of us here are all working in the one institution now… I was actually working in
one of the other institutions at the time of this particular project… what we're really, I think,
focusing on and thinking about is taking the learning and taking some of the elements of that
project into how we facilitate peer observation of teaching within one institution. So focusing
on the cross-disciplinary aspect, so between schools, between faculties, and really taking
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some of that learning and embedding it within the existing processes that we have here. And as Ann
Marie just mentioned there, specifically also focusing on the role of this for new educators
in the way that she described, I think it's hugely powerful in terms of those first steps
into teaching, which can be so daunting and so challenging for somebody new to practice.
One of the things I was thinking, and this relates to a conversation we had in an earlier
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podcast with Anna and Ann Marie, is that by having people from different disciplines,
the focus of the observation will be on the pedagogy and on teaching techniques,
rather than on the content. Because when we observe people teaching the same courses or in
the same discipline, we often tend to think about how we might be doing it, rather than focusing on
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what is actually being done in the classroom. Is that one of the benefits of this cross
disciplinary aspect of the peer observations? Yes, absolutely, I completely think that it is,
John, for all of the reasons that you've stated. I think it really helps people to focus on the
process rather than the product of teaching. And I think what's also useful is it also encourages,
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and I don't know Ann Marie and Anne if you might have experienced this, but I feel that
it encourages people in the observation setting to also focus on what the students, what the
learners, are doing in that teaching space. So not just what the great teaching that Anna
and Ann Marie are facilitating, but also (23:54):
What are the students doing? How are they engaging?
When are they being active? When do they appear to be coming a little bit more passive? And that,
I'm sure can be really, really helpful then for the individual who is being observed,
because it's that other set of eyes, and it's a different lens through which you're seeing
what is happening in that teaching space. I would agree with that. I think when you observe
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somebody who is from the same discipline or sub-discipline as you, you can get very caught up
with the content and the curriculum, and you lose sight of the teaching and the learning. Whereas
if you don't know anything about the curriculum or about the concepts that are being taught, you
have to focus on the teaching. You have to focus on the learning. You have to focus on the actions
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that have been taken by the teacher and by the students in that context. So it is very helpful,
and I think it can be accomplished, though, even within a discipline. So at university level,
in particular, the more specialized, narrow experts in some tiny nano aspect we are,
the more hireable we are, and the better we are at research and so on. So people within education,
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for example, who might be in different sub-disciplines, I think, while there would be
some overlap in terms of content, in many cases, there isn't. So even within a discipline, I think
you could enable peer observation of teaching, to observe somebody in another sub-discipline,
albeit that you're all coming from the same main discipline, if that was a factor in an
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institution or whatever, but it definitely forces you to look at the teaching rather
than the content of what has been taught.And I would absolutely agree with that. And
just again, I think Martina’s focus was why it was cross-Institutional,
why it was cross-disciplinary. The shared concern was teaching large classes. So that
was a shared concern. I would completely support Martina’s observation. In that
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business classroom. I felt I was authentically a learner, and that, at least to some extent,
gave me insights into how the strategies that the lecturer were using were being experienced
by my fellow students in the classroom, and also because it was about leadership theory in business
education, and that, as both Ann Marie and Martina have said, meant that I wasn't getting distracted
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about… I mean, it's natural for us to think, okay, but I'm teaching that I'm going to use
that strategy. It's great. I'm going to use it. Or if I were doing it, I'd be using a different
case study, or I'd be using a different student response system, or whatever it was. Instead,
I was really pared back to the things that I recognized about this dynamic of working with a
large class, the strategies that the person I was observing was using to seek, maintain attention,
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to support students’ reflection, for example. So it's kind of paring it back to the core
teaching and learning strategies, and as I say, authentically, putting me in the learner place
as much as I could be. The other thing that I thought was interesting, just thinking about it
further too, Ann Marie's observation was, while our disciplines were very different, and indeed,
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the time that we had spent working and teaching in higher education were very different. We’re
very different terms of our experience, my peer spontaneously… I had asked for feedback on certain
aspects of my teaching… but she spontaneously said that she liked how I had given feedback
and that she was going to use that similar kind of approach. So again, that was affirming, but that
was maybe particularly valuable because it was coming from a very, very different discipline,
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Building on what we're talking about, can you share some advice to other folks that
might want to set up a similar model of feedback at their own institution?
I think there's some key factors which are important, regardless of whether it's
cross-institutional or within one institution. Obviously, if it's cross-institutional,
you need to secure your trusted partners in each institution, and there are funding
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and logistical implications. But I think that there's a few common ingredients for success,
and one of those is something that I think we've all touched on in the discussion, is that creation
of that sense of safety and trust in terms of the system. So having a very clear process and plan,
making sure that you start with participants around the rationale for, and the philosophy of,
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peer observation, that introduction into the ethos, very clear guidance in terms of the stages
of observation, the feedback conversations, how to reflect, giving people templates to assist them
to do that, so making it as easy as possible, so that academic staff feel that it's safe,
but it's also feasible. It's also something that's achievable and that they can build into
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their practice. So I think that structure and that support is really, really key. I
think keeping the conversations alive then about peer observation of teaching and giving people
opportunities to hear from those who have already experienced it. So just a couple of months ago,
we ran a session during our teaching and learning week here at DCU, where Anna and Ann Marie and
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another colleague spoke about their experience of peer observation of teaching and what it was like,
and what they gained from it, and the challenges and the opportunities. So it's really important
for people to hear those voices from the field, so to speak. And the third thing I would say, is
maintaining a focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning around these and the opportunities
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for research. So we've been very lucky in terms of this project. It spawned, I think, probably three
publications at this point in time, but one of them, which is the most important one, of course,
was a co-authored publication by myself and the two other faculty developers, but also all of the
participants. And I think that was a really, I think, lovely and enjoyable part of the process,
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but really, really powerful in terms of keeping that focus on not just the research output and the
research impact of this, but actually what that could contribute to the scholarship of the whole
area. So those are my three pieces of advice.And just to add to what Martina had said there,
the scholarship and the joint publication for us… first of all, it was so generous of Martina
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and her two colleagues to enable that. Obviously we are expected to write and to research and to
publish, and because of the way Martina, Muireann, and Morag structured that, and
built in the scholarship that enabled that, that ticked a box for us. And sometimes the teaching
and learning piece for staff… staff can see it as something other, and they don't have time for it,
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because they have to do research, whereas we need to be looking at those two things being aligned,
and I learned a lot from Martina and her two colleagues did that time, and I'm actually
using it in a project I'm involved in now where I've built in opportunity, hopefully,
to get ethical approval. But anyway, I've built in an opportunity for intended focus groups of staff
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here in my faculty to get publications based on their work, on their focus group for themselves,
and to get publications for themselves. And I think that's important, because the reality is we
do have to do that, and we cannot ignore it. And the more we can align those two things from the
beginning of a project like this, the better. Absolutely, I'd reiterate that. So in terms of
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impact, I would encourage any colleague to go for it. You'll gain more than you'll put into
it. A practical consideration, I think, spending that time using the kind of reflective models that
Martina and her colleagues supported us with to enable us to identify what aspects of teaching you
want feedback on. If there's training available before, the kind of model that Martina used,
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absolutely go for it. I would strongly encourage it outside of your discipline, and, if possible,
outside of your institution. And then finally, to reiterate Martina's observation about the
alignment with scholarship and to encourage Ann Marie on that, that has had a huge impact.
The experience of engaging in this pilot peer observation project has had a huge impact on my
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own practice and then subsequently as a leader of teaching and learning within my faculty. So
I found myself talking about this experience a great deal. Actually, it happened at a time
when our institutions were undergoing a lot of change. So it was a really positive experience.
And therefore I have found myself talking to lots of colleagues in my capacity as a leader in
(32:27):
teaching and learning about this and encouraging them, even in their own informal sort of ways,
to avail of every opportunity to get into other people's classrooms and to engage in that feedback
piece. And in terms of the alignment with the research, just to echo Ann Marie's observation
of how valuable that was, and that has had a huge impact on other aspects of my practice,
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for example, leading projects during the COVID pandemic, which were about transition of placement
online, and I was really conscious from the get go to build in the opportunities for scholarship,
to secure the ethical approval, and we've had several outputs in Scopus quartile 1 ranked
journals on foot of that. And it's continuing to impact on my practice in the different role
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I have in leading placement in my faculty at the moment, and again, adopting that role of
kind of having participant researchers, very much focused on participant researchers and
building on all those opportunities, as Martina said, not just to tick the box of publication,
but the reality is we do need to do that, but to be quite explicit in colleagues about how
(33:32):
collectively we are contributing to the furthering of the scholarship of teaching and learning,
as well as enhancing our own skills and competencies as higher education teachers.
We'll include a link to those studies in the show notes so that people can access them. I
believe one of the things I saw in at least one of those papers was a suggestion that this has
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led to faculty forming wider support networks, that many of these relationships, once they
were formed in a classroom, have continued since then and provided people with more peer support,
which I think in a time when higher education is changing quite rapidly, could be really
important. Have you found that often happen, that people have continued the relationships
(34:14):
after the initial peer observation?I just was one observation on that,
and one of the reasons that I was motivated to engage in the study was because it provided an
opportunity to work with our colleagues in the university's teaching enhancement unit. And again,
that was a really positive so that has absolutely encouraged me, personally, to continue to engage
(34:37):
with colleagues. I’ve engaged with, actually, colleagues who were involved with Martina in
leading the institution in other contexts. So that relationship and also encouraging,
again, in my own role as a leader in teaching and learning, encouraging other colleagues in
the faculty to similarly engage as much as possible with colleagues in the teaching
(34:57):
enhancement unit in relation to other aspects of enhancing and supporting teaching and learning.
Well, we always wrap up by asking, what's next?So from my perspective, and we've mentioned this a
little bit already, it's really, I think, taking those learnings and those elements that we've
used in that pilot project and implementing them within a system within the institution. So I think
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our focus on the future will be very much from that cross- disciplinary perspective, so getting
different schools and different faculties to work together on this. So that will certainly be one
of the things that we'll be focusing on in the future. I think also maintaining that scholarship
of teaching and learning. This is something that I think is ripe for research in so many
different contexts, and I think maintaining that collaborative and that participatory approach to
(35:44):
the research as well. So that will certainly be some of our key focus in the future.
For me, in terms of just my own practice, I suppose I have continued on in the way I described
earlier, with newer members of staff and existing members of staff coming in to classes sometimes
as well. But maybe going forward, it's something that maybe could be a bit more formalized or a
(36:06):
bit more structured. At the minute, it's ad hoc, so maybe in our own school, that it's something
that could be more structured, more obvious, and spread out a bit more, although I have to say a
lot of staff in the school I work in already would have people. They're very welcoming for
other members of staff to come in and sit in and observe and listen to their sessions
(36:27):
and so on. So I'm very lucky from that perspective that the doors are open anyway, but maybe it is
something we could do a little bit more in a structured way, for new people coming in.
And just to add to that, again, just thinking about Ann Marie's right, in our own school of
inclusive and special education, there will be a lot of awareness and knowledge in terms of
the programs that we offer in the school. But just in terms of teacher education,
(36:50):
initial teacher education does tend to be quite packed programs with lots and lots of different
elements. And we've come out of faculty quality review and come out of a significant review of
our initial teacher education programs, and maybe peer observation might also provide a context for
colleagues to learn about disparate elements of a program that's a very large program with
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a view not just to professional development for those involved in the peer observation, but also
developing a kind of a shared understanding of what the program looks like. The more we know
about what each other is doing in a program, the more we can scaffold our students’ learning and
gets us a little bit out of our silos as well. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's
(37:37):
always great to hear about the work that you're doing, and peer observation is important work,
and it's helpful to hear of specific models of how this can work.
We've really enjoyed learning more about this process, and we look forward to future
conversations. Thank you.Thank you.
Thank you, both of you, for inviting us.Thanks. John. Thanks. Rebecca.
(38:02):
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes
or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on
our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and
other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
Peer observation and peer feedback can be useful resources for faculty professional development.
In this episode, we examine a cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary peer observation process.
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective
(00:24):
practices in teaching and learning. This podcast series is hosted by
John Kane, an economist... ...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more
inclusive and supportive of all learners.Our guests today are Anna Logan, Ann Marie
(00:52):
Farrell, and Martina Crehan. Anna is an Associate Professor in the School of Inclusive and Special
Education and the former Dean of Teaching and Learning at the Institute of Education,
Dublin City University. Ann Marie is an Assistant Professor, also in the School of Inclusive and
Special Education at Dublin City University. Martina is Head of Teaching Enhancement Unit
(01:14):
at Dublin City University. She has over 20 years experience in professional development
and as a curriculum innovator. Welcome back, Anna and Ann Marie and welcome Martina.
Hi. Thanks for having us back. It's good to see you again. Today's
teas are:... Anna, what tea do you have today?Today I am having a very traditional Barry's
(01:37):
Red Label tea. Barry's is a very famous Irish tea from County Cork. So I'm having that.
And Ann Marie?I am having an earl grey
tea today. That's actually my favorite tea. So that's what I'm having this afternoon.
And Martina?So I've gone a little bit
more exotic with a rooibos tea. So it makes me think of beautiful warm blue skies.
(02:00):
And I have an English afternoon today,And I have… something I missed out last
time… an Irish breakfast tea today, I would have had Barry’s if I was able to get back
to the office this morning, but it's a Twinings, but at least it's Irish breakfast this time.
at least the right part of the world, John. So we've invited you here today to discuss your joint
work in setting up a cross-institutional process of peer observation of teaching. Can you tell us a
(02:25):
little bit about the origins of this project?Thanks, Rebecca. So this project was a
collaboration between three Irish universities, Dublin City University, Maynooth University and
RCSI, and our story began, hard to believe now, actually, as far back as 2017 and it started with
a conversation between myself and two colleagues who worked as faculty developers in three
(02:49):
institutions. Have to mention my co-conspirators here, Muireann O’Keeffe and Morag Munro,
and we'd all been involved in peer observation of teaching work in one form or another in our
respective institutions. We were very aware of how valuable a tool it could be in scaffolding
professional dialog and reflection and practice, and we became very interested in the potential
(03:13):
for cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary peer observation. A lot of the literature at the
time was very focused on peer observation of teaching in a single institution, but we were
coming across more and more publications which really focused on the power of cross-disciplinary
and cross-institutional. We were really lucky to have some funding at the time that was available
(03:35):
via a partnership between the three institutions. So we initiated a pilot scheme. We focused it on
large-group teaching as the common focus for the participants, and designed a process where
we supported the participants with an induction. We also supported them in terms of the observation
process itself, reflection, professional conversations and so on. And we sought volunteers,
(04:00):
and were really lucky to be joined by, I think, 10 volunteers across the three institutions from
a range of different backgrounds, two of whom were Ann Marie and Anna, and I think they might want to
speak about their motivations for joining us.Well, from my perspective, I was just very
interested immediately by the idea of having an opportunity to work with somebody outside of DCU,
(04:24):
outside of my own university. And my background is teaching. I was originally a primary school
teacher, and so that's my background. And since I've been working in higher education,
I've been really interested in the pedagogical aspect of my work. So when the invitation went
out, it just seemed like something that was really interesting to me, and it fitted in
(04:46):
with some of the work I was already doing. So that's what motivated me to join up.
And I love teaching. And of course, this was something that was focused on teaching. I think
Martina might have mentioned that it was focused on large-class teaching, which was something that
I was really interested in. So that was another motivating factor. When I read a little bit
about it, or was approached, the structure and the opportunity to engage in reflection on my
(05:10):
teaching, particularly the teaching in a large class, was really useful. I am very committed to
improving my teaching all the time, and I really was motivated by the opportunity that I could
identify aspects of my teaching that I had a hunch weren't great, that I was a little bit concerned
about my pacing, for example, and so I knew this would give me potentially a good opportunity to
(05:33):
get feedback on that and develop my skills in terms of teaching those large classes.
When we do peer evaluation of teaching on our campus, it could be for formative purposes,
but it's often more for summative evaluation, which is perhaps not the most useful form of peer
observation, and I really like the idea of having people from other institutions observe teaching,
(05:55):
because it takes away any possibility of that type of summative evaluation. Have people appreciated
that aspect, that they’re getting reactions from people outside their campus who will
not be involved, even indirectly, in evaluating their teaching for retention or other purposes.
From my perspective as a participant in the cross-institutional peer observation of teaching
(06:20):
project, it was absolutely fantastic to have somebody coming from a completely different
context who didn't know one single thing about the culture and the ideas and the way we do things,
even generally as an institution, never mind specifically, in my classroom. And I was paired up
with a guy who was teaching a completely different subject area and he was doing something around
(06:44):
digital media and literacy for trainee doctors at RCSI, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland,
so it's a medical university in its entirety. So he was coming from a completely different
perspective, and even when we visited each other's institutions, that was really useful. Like one
of his comments is, a lot of my students are all student teachers, they're all resident in Ireland,
(07:08):
most of them go home at the weekends, whereas his students were mostly International, maybe
went home once a year. So he was very struck. He came in to see me on a Friday morning, and there
were about 40 suitcases lined up at the door as the students were coming to my session, and
then were running for buses to go home. And he was struck by that, and even just the profile of the
(07:30):
class. So what's really useful about that kind of cross-institutional thing is that you see your own
students, your own organization, in a much broader context. And I think that does influence how you
view Teaching and Learning then as well. And I absolutely agree with Ann Marie's
observations in relation to that. I also think that the cross-disciplinary nature that Ann Marie
(07:54):
has highlighted was really very, very important. And coming back to your observation, John,
that this really wasn't about summative assessment, this was about mentoring and
peer support and mutual peer support. I was paired with somebody from a business background, so I was
visiting and observing in a large undergraduate business classroom. And it struck me at the time
(08:18):
that I was authentically a learner in that place. There wasn't a competition. I wasn't going in with
my lens as a teacher educator with a particular interest in inclusive and special education. So
it was, I suppose, in a way, less competitive. And maybe this wasn't a conscious thing, it wasn't,
“how do they do it in this institution?” Because it was an entirely different discipline. It meant
(08:39):
I was an authentic learner about leadership and management education, and hopefully,
I think my peer was equally a learner in my classroom about inclusive education. So I
think it was both the cross-institutional and the cross-disciplinary which really supported
that mutual peer support aspect, rather than somebody coming in in an evaluative summative
(09:02):
role. It wasn't designed as such, and it didn't slip into that space because we were in different
disciplines and in different institutions.I think generally as well, just to add to that,
John, in Ireland, in higher education, probably for the most part, we're quite
lucky where peer observation of teaching in most institutions has maintained that
(09:23):
very formative developmental aspect. It's actually very rarely used here in that much more summative,
evaluative way. So I think we're very lucky from that perspective. But as I was listening to Anna
and Ann Marie speaking there, I'm not sure if somebody used this phrase in some of the research
that we've conducted on this, but I remember somebody talking about the cross-institutional
(09:46):
and the cross-disciplinary piece allowed you to tune into a different frequency of teaching and
learning. And I thought that was just a lovely way of summarizing all of that which kind of resonated
with me and has stayed with me, I have to say.One of the things that I heard you both speaking
about is being a non-expert in a classroom on the subject matter, which helps you be in the
(10:07):
classroom as a learner, and probably helps you give really different feedback on the teaching of
your peer, in a different way than if you are an expert on the subject matter, which I find to be
really interesting and really helpful. And I know that when I've had the opportunity to be in other
classrooms of different disciplines, have found to be one of the most exciting and rich experiences
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as an observer is to be in those really different disciplines: (A) because it's really interesting
to learn something new, but (B) because the methodologies are often really different and
give you some really interesting and new ideas. I'm interested to hear a little bit more about
some of the logistics of how this process was put in place, because you're talking a little
(10:51):
bit about visiting the different institutions and coordinating three different organizations,
and that sounds like a really complex situation to put together. Can you talk
a little bit about what that was like for both the organizers as well as the participants.
So, I think we were very lucky in that, from my perspective, from an organizational point of view,
(11:13):
I had a colleague in each of the other institutions who was as enthusiastic
and as motivated in this. So from a logistical perspective, we kind of shared the organization,
and we shared the locations for some of the induction workshops and some of the conversations
that we needed to have with the participants, which Anna and Ann Marie will be able to talk
to you about from their perspective and as a participant. We took the responsibility
(11:38):
of matching the individuals, so that made it, I think, a little bit easier for the participants,
and then it was really up to them to organize: When will I visit? What day? What time? How will (11:44):
undefined
that work out? So we left that in the hands of the participants so that they could make their own
decisions, and hopefully that made it a little bit easier for them. So I think from the organization
point of view, the logistics were possibly maybe a little bit easier than for the participants.
(12:05):
Well, from a participant's perspective, I just found it was really well structured.
So we had like a planning or a support day with Martina, Muireann, and Morag at the beginning
of the process, where they went through models of reflective practice. They went through principles
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of the type of feedback, or considerations we as participants needed to take into consideration
when we were working with our partner, like, for example, establishing ground rules with
your partner in terms of what the nature of the feedback, maybe what you would request
as feedback that the person being observed might ask for particular feedback and so on. So it was
(12:52):
just really well supported from the outset, and then when Martina then sent us off in our pairs,
I linked in with my partner, and we had at least one, if not two, phone conversations,
and that was to agree when we were going to meet, who was going to go where and when, basic things,
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like giving directions, all of that sort of thing. And then when we met, we gave each other a tour
of each other's University. And that was really interesting, and it broke the ice. It was a lovely
kind of, I suppose, relationship-building thing, like we spent a little time in both institutions
before we did the feedback or the observation or whatever. And in our case, the chap I was paired
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with came and observed two of my classes. He asked could he come and see a second one? And I said,
“Yes,” I was delighted. His classes were mainly completed at that point in the semester,
but he had recorded them, so I watched one of his recordings, and then we sat down in terms
of feedback. And it was interesting, because I was far more nervous about giving feedback
(14:00):
than I was about receiving it, because I am a teacher educator. I go out to schools all the
time. I'm constantly giving feedback on teaching, and that's a very particular context in terms of
going out to one of our students who's doing a course. But this was different. So I didn't want
to become the teacher educator. I wanted it to be equal. So I was quite nervous actually about
(14:22):
giving the feedback. But the whole process of the actual observations and the feedback was just so
collegial. It was eye opening, like he saw things that he could only see because he was sitting at
the top of the room, and I do walk around when I'm in a tiered lecture theater. I walk around,
but I cannot sit down at the back for 30 minutes or an hour and watch, whereas he did, and he had
(14:47):
very interesting things to say about what students were doing while class was going on. So that
actual process of the two of us working together, I just found it really, really, really useful.
So that was my main takeaway around that.My experience was different. You asked about
the process, John, so just talking about the process, my experience of the process was
(15:09):
slightly different. Yes, there was that initial face-to-face workshop, which was really useful.
But there was a flexibility in this. Even though it was structured, there was quite a
lot of flexibility. Martina said, after that first day, it was really handed over to us in our pairs
to work it out. And I think one of the things that was great about it was the flexibility, because we
had to be quite flexible, my partner and I, for a number of reasons. First of all, my partner hadn't
(15:32):
been able to come to that initial first day, so Ann Marie mentioned the kind of the building and
the breaking the ice. So actually, we had to do that. I was on Skype at the time, because
this was before COVID and I certainly wasn't comfortable in Skype. I'd never used it before,
so there was quite a lot there, but we had a long conversation and a long getting to know you chat
(15:54):
on Skype, which did help us to break that barrier. Now again, Ann Marie, you mentioned the logistics
of when this would happen in the academic year, when it would happen in the semester. So there
were constraints to do with that which are to do with when a module started, when it ended.
So I was very fortunate in that my partner was still teaching at that time, so I could get out
(16:17):
and go to her university. Again, we built in time to have a chat, as Ann Marie had said,
while we had to do it on Skype again, we were very clear about what we wanted feedback on, and I
would totally relate to Ann Marie's observation. I'm really used to giving feedback. I was very
much conscious of stepping away from that. And again, it was a different discipline and so on. So
(16:38):
I went out to and I observed the lecture live in a large lecture theater, and we had our feedback
session after that, but it was a bit different for me, because my teaching in that particular module
was in blocks, and it just didn't suit my partner to come out. But again, as Ann Marie said, we
could record. So I recorded the session and shared the recording with my partner, and then we came
(17:03):
together again online and had our conversation. So the flexibility was great in terms of the process,
and that structure at the beginning, clear guidelines, ground rules, all that sort of thing.
Then flexibility was really important. Because if it had had to be you have to see a face-to-face
lecture, or it has to happen within a certain period of time, there was that flexibility which
(17:25):
made it very achievable too, I think, for usNow, you've already addressed some of this in
terms of your responses, Anna and Ann Marie, but have you heard any other responses from
faculty in terms of the general reaction to this process? Has it been popular? Have people
been anxious or concerned about it? How have faculty, more broadly, responded to this.
(17:46):
I can address this to some extent from the perspective of the pilot project, and then
maybe other forms of peer observation within single institutions which I've been involved
in. And I think for many people, particularly when they start on this process, it's a mixture of fear
trepidation, a sense of the unknown. What am I signing up to? What am I jumping into? Because
(18:10):
realistically, you know, for most of us in any teaching context, we go into our lecture theater,
our classroom, our lab, and we close the door. It's us and the students. So that concept of
having somebody sit at the back of the classroom or the front of the classroom and observe us
is challenging, and I think particularly in an Irish context, it puts us in mind of the cigire,
(18:32):
which is our Irish word for inspector, who might come in, particularly if we're in teacher training
as primary level or second level, will come in and assess us in that more evaluative way. So it
is certainly daunting for people at the start, so the structures and the supports that we put around
it are really, really key in that. And one of the things that participants usually respond to quite
well is that sense of support, the fact that it is developmental, that it is not something that
(18:58):
is evaluative, that judgments are being made on, and the fact that there is a reciprocity.
So if I'm paired with Anna, then she will come into my classroom, I'll go into her classroom.
And the philosophy is really centered around a conversation about our teaching and learning
practice. And I think once people have experienced that for the first time and get that sense of
(19:20):
the philosophy and the ethos, it really kind of helps that progression, and it helps that
sense of comfort and that sense of familiarity. So for the most part, I mean, there are people,
I think, who probably feel a little bit more challenged about it for a longer period of time,
but I think having those supports in place are really, really key to ensuring that participants
engage in this in a productive and a positive way and see it as something that helps their practice
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and is going to develop their practice. And I suppose, from my perspective, since
engaging in that pilot project, I've invited a lot of people into my class for a variety of reasons,
and sometimes not about the teaching and learning piece, but more about the content. So I've
invited staff in if they so wished, if we've guest speakers, or if I'm in doing a session on special
(20:08):
and inclusive education, other teacher educators who might be interested. And sometimes we do have
some other members of faculty who come in and join for some of those and that’s not quite the same
thing, but I would be much more confident in doing that now, and I also think it is really important
for very new members of staff. I think for the most part, new lecturers are thrown in teaching.
(20:32):
They're the one group of teachers who perhaps do not have a teaching qualification, and they're
in what are arguably some of the most complex situations and some peer observation of teaching,
but maybe initially, one way where new members of staff can come in and be invited in to observe
large-class teaching, just to help them get off the ground themselves, or that has, in my case,
(20:55):
morphed into co-teaching, where somebody has come in initially a new member of staff has
come in to observe, and that's then kind of the teaching, and that very large class context,
in my instance, is supported then in a very collegial, safe way, before they get up and
stand in front of 400 students on their own. So it can lead to that. I suppose it's like having
(21:17):
an open-door policy. And it might start off as one way, but if the person ends up co-teaching one or
two sessions with you, actually, you can then talk about teaching and learning in that context and
give feedback to both of us, rather than the person, in terms of evaluating how the
class went or whatever. So it has potential way beyond just two people observing each other.
(21:40):
So Martina, you mentioned that this was a pilot project. Is this something that
you're hoping to continue across the three institutions and expand beyond a pilot?
I think we would love to. Obviously, there are very fundamental issues like funding, which impact
future plans in this regard. So certainly we would love to continue. We'd love to expand. I think,
(22:01):
as the three of us here are all working in the one institution now… I was actually working in
one of the other institutions at the time of this particular project… what we're really, I think,
focusing on and thinking about is taking the learning and taking some of the elements of that
project into how we facilitate peer observation of teaching within one institution. So focusing
on the cross-disciplinary aspect, so between schools, between faculties, and really taking
(22:27):
some of that learning and embedding it within the existing processes that we have here. And as Ann
Marie just mentioned there, specifically also focusing on the role of this for new educators
in the way that she described, I think it's hugely powerful in terms of those first steps
into teaching, which can be so daunting and so challenging for somebody new to practice.
One of the things I was thinking, and this relates to a conversation we had in an earlier
(22:52):
podcast with Anna and Ann Marie, is that by having people from different disciplines,
the focus of the observation will be on the pedagogy and on teaching techniques,
rather than on the content. Because when we observe people teaching the same courses or in
the same discipline, we often tend to think about how we might be doing it, rather than focusing on
(23:15):
what is actually being done in the classroom. Is that one of the benefits of this cross
disciplinary aspect of the peer observations? Yes, absolutely, I completely think that it is,
John, for all of the reasons that you've stated. I think it really helps people to focus on the
process rather than the product of teaching. And I think what's also useful is it also encourages,
(23:39):
and I don't know Ann Marie and Anne if you might have experienced this, but I feel that
it encourages people in the observation setting to also focus on what the students, what the
learners, are doing in that teaching space. So not just what the great teaching that Anna
and Ann Marie are facilitating, but also (23:54):
What are the students doing? How are they engaging?
When are they being active? When do they appear to be coming a little bit more passive? And that,
I'm sure can be really, really helpful then for the individual who is being observed,
because it's that other set of eyes, and it's a different lens through which you're seeing
what is happening in that teaching space. I would agree with that. I think when you observe
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somebody who is from the same discipline or sub-discipline as you, you can get very caught up
with the content and the curriculum, and you lose sight of the teaching and the learning. Whereas
if you don't know anything about the curriculum or about the concepts that are being taught, you
have to focus on the teaching. You have to focus on the learning. You have to focus on the actions
(24:41):
that have been taken by the teacher and by the students in that context. So it is very helpful,
and I think it can be accomplished, though, even within a discipline. So at university level,
in particular, the more specialized, narrow experts in some tiny nano aspect we are,
the more hireable we are, and the better we are at research and so on. So people within education,
(25:06):
for example, who might be in different sub-disciplines, I think, while there would be
some overlap in terms of content, in many cases, there isn't. So even within a discipline, I think
you could enable peer observation of teaching, to observe somebody in another sub-discipline,
albeit that you're all coming from the same main discipline, if that was a factor in an
(25:28):
institution or whatever, but it definitely forces you to look at the teaching rather
than the content of what has been taught.And I would absolutely agree with that. And
just again, I think Martina’s focus was why it was cross-Institutional,
why it was cross-disciplinary. The shared concern was teaching large classes. So that
was a shared concern. I would completely support Martina’s observation. In that
(25:53):
business classroom. I felt I was authentically a learner, and that, at least to some extent,
gave me insights into how the strategies that the lecturer were using were being experienced
by my fellow students in the classroom, and also because it was about leadership theory in business
education, and that, as both Ann Marie and Martina have said, meant that I wasn't getting distracted
(26:18):
about… I mean, it's natural for us to think, okay, but I'm teaching that I'm going to use
that strategy. It's great. I'm going to use it. Or if I were doing it, I'd be using a different
case study, or I'd be using a different student response system, or whatever it was. Instead,
I was really pared back to the things that I recognized about this dynamic of working with a
large class, the strategies that the person I was observing was using to seek, maintain attention,
(26:45):
to support students’ reflection, for example. So it's kind of paring it back to the core
teaching and learning strategies, and as I say, authentically, putting me in the learner place
as much as I could be. The other thing that I thought was interesting, just thinking about it
further too, Ann Marie's observation was, while our disciplines were very different, and indeed,
(27:06):
the time that we had spent working and teaching in higher education were very different. We’re
very different terms of our experience, my peer spontaneously… I had asked for feedback on certain
aspects of my teaching… but she spontaneously said that she liked how I had given feedback
and that she was going to use that similar kind of approach. So again, that was affirming, but that
was maybe particularly valuable because it was coming from a very, very different discipline,
(27:30):
Building on what we're talking about, can you share some advice to other folks that
might want to set up a similar model of feedback at their own institution?
I think there's some key factors which are important, regardless of whether it's
cross-institutional or within one institution. Obviously, if it's cross-institutional,
you need to secure your trusted partners in each institution, and there are funding
(27:55):
and logistical implications. But I think that there's a few common ingredients for success,
and one of those is something that I think we've all touched on in the discussion, is that creation
of that sense of safety and trust in terms of the system. So having a very clear process and plan,
making sure that you start with participants around the rationale for, and the philosophy of,
(28:18):
peer observation, that introduction into the ethos, very clear guidance in terms of the stages
of observation, the feedback conversations, how to reflect, giving people templates to assist them
to do that, so making it as easy as possible, so that academic staff feel that it's safe,
but it's also feasible. It's also something that's achievable and that they can build into
(28:41):
their practice. So I think that structure and that support is really, really key. I
think keeping the conversations alive then about peer observation of teaching and giving people
opportunities to hear from those who have already experienced it. So just a couple of months ago,
we ran a session during our teaching and learning week here at DCU, where Anna and Ann Marie and
(29:04):
another colleague spoke about their experience of peer observation of teaching and what it was like,
and what they gained from it, and the challenges and the opportunities. So it's really important
for people to hear those voices from the field, so to speak. And the third thing I would say, is
maintaining a focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning around these and the opportunities
(29:25):
for research. So we've been very lucky in terms of this project. It spawned, I think, probably three
publications at this point in time, but one of them, which is the most important one, of course,
was a co-authored publication by myself and the two other faculty developers, but also all of the
participants. And I think that was a really, I think, lovely and enjoyable part of the process,
(29:50):
but really, really powerful in terms of keeping that focus on not just the research output and the
research impact of this, but actually what that could contribute to the scholarship of the whole
area. So those are my three pieces of advice.And just to add to what Martina had said there,
the scholarship and the joint publication for us… first of all, it was so generous of Martina
(30:13):
and her two colleagues to enable that. Obviously we are expected to write and to research and to
publish, and because of the way Martina, Muireann, and Morag structured that, and
built in the scholarship that enabled that, that ticked a box for us. And sometimes the teaching
and learning piece for staff… staff can see it as something other, and they don't have time for it,
(30:36):
because they have to do research, whereas we need to be looking at those two things being aligned,
and I learned a lot from Martina and her two colleagues did that time, and I'm actually
using it in a project I'm involved in now where I've built in opportunity, hopefully,
to get ethical approval. But anyway, I've built in an opportunity for intended focus groups of staff
(30:57):
here in my faculty to get publications based on their work, on their focus group for themselves,
and to get publications for themselves. And I think that's important, because the reality is we
do have to do that, and we cannot ignore it. And the more we can align those two things from the
beginning of a project like this, the better. Absolutely, I'd reiterate that. So in terms of
(31:21):
impact, I would encourage any colleague to go for it. You'll gain more than you'll put into
it. A practical consideration, I think, spending that time using the kind of reflective models that
Martina and her colleagues supported us with to enable us to identify what aspects of teaching you
want feedback on. If there's training available before, the kind of model that Martina used,
(31:44):
absolutely go for it. I would strongly encourage it outside of your discipline, and, if possible,
outside of your institution. And then finally, to reiterate Martina's observation about the
alignment with scholarship and to encourage Ann Marie on that, that has had a huge impact.
The experience of engaging in this pilot peer observation project has had a huge impact on my
(32:05):
own practice and then subsequently as a leader of teaching and learning within my faculty. So
I found myself talking about this experience a great deal. Actually, it happened at a time
when our institutions were undergoing a lot of change. So it was a really positive experience.
And therefore I have found myself talking to lots of colleagues in my capacity as a leader in
(32:27):
teaching and learning about this and encouraging them, even in their own informal sort of ways,
to avail of every opportunity to get into other people's classrooms and to engage in that feedback
piece. And in terms of the alignment with the research, just to echo Ann Marie's observation
of how valuable that was, and that has had a huge impact on other aspects of my practice,
(32:47):
for example, leading projects during the COVID pandemic, which were about transition of placement
online, and I was really conscious from the get go to build in the opportunities for scholarship,
to secure the ethical approval, and we've had several outputs in Scopus quartile 1 ranked
journals on foot of that. And it's continuing to impact on my practice in the different role
(33:11):
I have in leading placement in my faculty at the moment, and again, adopting that role of
kind of having participant researchers, very much focused on participant researchers and
building on all those opportunities, as Martina said, not just to tick the box of publication,
but the reality is we do need to do that, but to be quite explicit in colleagues about how
(33:32):
collectively we are contributing to the furthering of the scholarship of teaching and learning,
as well as enhancing our own skills and competencies as higher education teachers.
We'll include a link to those studies in the show notes so that people can access them. I
believe one of the things I saw in at least one of those papers was a suggestion that this has
(33:53):
led to faculty forming wider support networks, that many of these relationships, once they
were formed in a classroom, have continued since then and provided people with more peer support,
which I think in a time when higher education is changing quite rapidly, could be really
important. Have you found that often happen, that people have continued the relationships
(34:14):
after the initial peer observation?I just was one observation on that,
and one of the reasons that I was motivated to engage in the study was because it provided an
opportunity to work with our colleagues in the university's teaching enhancement unit. And again,
that was a really positive so that has absolutely encouraged me, personally, to continue to engage
(34:37):
with colleagues. I’ve engaged with, actually, colleagues who were involved with Martina in
leading the institution in other contexts. So that relationship and also encouraging,
again, in my own role as a leader in teaching and learning, encouraging other colleagues in
the faculty to similarly engage as much as possible with colleagues in the teaching
(34:57):
enhancement unit in relation to other aspects of enhancing and supporting teaching and learning.
Well, we always wrap up by asking, what's next?So from my perspective, and we've mentioned this a
little bit already, it's really, I think, taking those learnings and those elements that we've
used in that pilot project and implementing them within a system within the institution. So I think
(35:20):
our focus on the future will be very much from that cross- disciplinary perspective, so getting
different schools and different faculties to work together on this. So that will certainly be one
of the things that we'll be focusing on in the future. I think also maintaining that scholarship
of teaching and learning. This is something that I think is ripe for research in so many
different contexts, and I think maintaining that collaborative and that participatory approach to
(35:44):
the research as well. So that will certainly be some of our key focus in the future.
For me, in terms of just my own practice, I suppose I have continued on in the way I described
earlier, with newer members of staff and existing members of staff coming in to classes sometimes
as well. But maybe going forward, it's something that maybe could be a bit more formalized or a
(36:06):
bit more structured. At the minute, it's ad hoc, so maybe in our own school, that it's something
that could be more structured, more obvious, and spread out a bit more, although I have to say a
lot of staff in the school I work in already would have people. They're very welcoming for
other members of staff to come in and sit in and observe and listen to their sessions
(36:27):
and so on. So I'm very lucky from that perspective that the doors are open anyway, but maybe it is
something we could do a little bit more in a structured way, for new people coming in.
And just to add to that, again, just thinking about Ann Marie's right, in our own school of
inclusive and special education, there will be a lot of awareness and knowledge in terms of
the programs that we offer in the school. But just in terms of teacher education,
(36:50):
initial teacher education does tend to be quite packed programs with lots and lots of different
elements. And we've come out of faculty quality review and come out of a significant review of
our initial teacher education programs, and maybe peer observation might also provide a context for
colleagues to learn about disparate elements of a program that's a very large program with
(37:16):
a view not just to professional development for those involved in the peer observation, but also
developing a kind of a shared understanding of what the program looks like. The more we know
about what each other is doing in a program, the more we can scaffold our students’ learning and
gets us a little bit out of our silos as well. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's
(37:37):
always great to hear about the work that you're doing, and peer observation is important work,
and it's helpful to hear of specific models of how this can work.
We've really enjoyed learning more about this process, and we look forward to future
conversations. Thank you.Thank you.
Thank you, both of you, for inviting us.Thanks. John. Thanks. Rebecca.
(38:02):
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes
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our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and
other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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