Peer Observation Advantages And Disadvantages

As an explorative and investigative procedure, peer observation is regarded as the most powerful source of insight. It is also, on a broader sense, viewed as a collaborative non-evaluative process consisting of two or more peers who mutually take profit from the exchanges held in dialogues. It is within these dialogues that arise questions which intend to stimulate reflection and discussion meaning to provide each other with feedback. Yet, peer observation, in this view, tends to bring teachers together and provides them the chance to interact and share their ideas and expertise of teaching. Observation gives to teachers a new outlook built on the way the other teachers teach and much more it creates collegiality in any educational setting.

Observation is therefore seen as being closely related to supervisory and evaluation; consequently, it is often regarded as a threatening experience. Williams (1989) summed some of the negatives of the traditional classroom observations:
• The teachers did not. Like it. It was threatening, frightening, and regarded as an ordeal.
• It was prescriptive.
• The checklist focused on too much at once.
• The teachers had no responsibility for the assessment. It was teacher-centred. Nowadays in higher education, it is increasingly recognised that peer observation receives far more importance and interest than any other form of professional development courses. It is, in fact, the method which offers the academic staff the possibility to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching of all teachers of the department by enhancing them to undertake reflective practice which in turn can be used as a method that offers formative feedback and therefore provides the evidence to substantiate student evaluation (Hammersley-Fletcher & Orsmond 2004). The evaluative form of observation is not thereby the only model with which is sought teaching effectiveness, but there exist other models which underpin change and betterment in the teaching profession (Gosling