Peer review of teaching to promote learning outcomes

Abstract

In 1990, American educator Ernest Boyer asked us to reconsider scholarship. In doing this he recognised not only the importance of teaching, but also that it was undervalued. Boyer concluded that for teaching to become valued it needed to be evaluated as rigorously as research is and suggested, among other things, that peer evaluation was an effective means of assessing quality – just as it is in research. Boyer noted that peer evaluation of teaching was not commonly practised in American higher education. The situation remains similar to this day in Australia with peer review of teaching (PRT) being uncommon.