Peer Reviewers of Teaching

A new departmental resource to guide promotion and tenure decisions through peer reviews of teaching-related materials

by Carla B. Howery, Academic and Professional Affairs Program

When an academic sociologist comes up for promotion and/or tenure, the common evaluation metric includes teaching, research, and service. The evaluation of teaching is primarily based on student evaluations of teaching. While most experts in higher education support this form of evidence, they also note its limitations. In particular, students are less able than professional peers to evaluate a faculty member’s knowledge of the field, knowledge and application of the literature in higher education, the quality of pedagogical innovations, and learning outcomes. If this expertise is important part of professional competence, then we need to identify ways to share our knowledge about teaching and have it reviewed by peers.

In some departments, a chair, dean, sociology colleague, or a faculty member in another discipline provides feedback from classroom visitations. Less often, a faculty member prepares a teaching portfolio and presents evidence of instructional innovation and results. Lingering as backdrop is the attitude some hold that teaching cannot be evaluated—it is too ephemeral or personal—and thus cannot be a significant part of a faculty reward system.

For many sociologists who study and measure concepts such as urban decay, marital happiness, and alienation, evaluating teaching is an intellectual challenge to be met. Many subscribe to former Carnegie Foundation President Ernest Boyer’s argument (1990) that teaching is a domain of scholarship that is subject to the same scrutiny as other scholarly work.

Building on Boyer’s view, many leaders in higher education make the argument that scholarship lies in the approach to an activity and not in the activity or product itself. Nonetheless, if faculty work (including teaching) is to be evaluated and rewarded, there must be some demonstrable product to examine. Sociologist Gene Rice suggests the following approach:

The established view of scholarship has another strength that needs to be built into a new, broader approach. Research is shared and is public. It energizes faculty because it has the potential for being not only extrinsically but also intrinsically rewarding. It is grounded in an associational life that opens the possibilities of a community of discourse tied directly to one’s own intellectual interest and expertise. It is also a cosmopolitan activity, that is, not only public but also portable. Achievements are recognized, rewarded by peers, documents, and available to others for evaluation. Before the new American scholar will have fully arrived, other forms of scholarly work—particularly teaching and service—are going to have to generate similar sorts of associational ties, the same kind of public visibility and critique, and be recognized as intellectual currency honored across the profession. (Rice, 1996:13)

Of course, current Carnegie President Lee Shulman’s call for “teaching as community property” further strengthens this argument (1993).

Hans O. Mauksch was one of sociology’s key early leaders in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), even before the term was invented. Using sociology terminology, of course, he said we need to move away from thinking that research is an “achieved status” and that teaching is “ascribed.” Ascribed, of course, means that teaching skill is innate, and one “has it” or doesn’t have charisma, teaching talent, and so on. Thus, if teaching skill is innate, it is impossible to think one can change or improve one’s teaching, and seemingly unfair to reward (or punish) colleagues’ teaching. The more prevalent view in higher education and in ASA’s Section on Teaching and Learning argues that the scholarship of teaching can be developed, improved, evaluated, and rewarded.

What are those fundamental, core elements of scholarship that could be applied to a scholarship of teaching and learning?

All professional work is enhanced by the degree to which it:

• Reveals an up-to-date knowledge base, based in one or more disciplines;
• Shows an appropriateness and effectiveness of content and method;
• Has demonstrable scope, importance, and impact;
• Is innovative and creative, and pushes the scholarly base of knowledge along;
• Can be replicated or elaborated;
• Can be documented¹; and
• Can be peer reviewed.^2,3

One impediment to having the scholarship of teaching included in promotion and tenure decisions is that departments do not know how or where to get the materials peer reviewed.

To address this need for qualified peer reviewers in teaching, the ASA’s Department Resources Group (DRG) has agreed to be available to undertake reviews of teaching-related materials for promotion and tenure. The DRG is ASA’s network of more than 50 consultants who have training and expertise in teaching sociology. To request a “match” with someone who has worked on assessment, simulations, teaching a particular course, teaching controversial materials, designing faculty evaluations, training graduate students to teach, teaching online, doing service learning or community-based research, innovative approaches to introductory sociology . . . and the list goes on . . . contact the DRG:

Carla B. Howery
Director, Academic & Professional Affairs Program;
(202) 383-9005 x. 323; e-mail: howery@asanet.org;
fax: (202) 638-0882.

Or, write to:

Department Resources Group
American Sociological Association
1307 New York Avenue NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005.

Notes

¹ Examples of sources of documentation can be found in Diamond, 1994, p. 20.
² Some of these criteria are articulated by Diamond and Adam, p. 12.
³ The term “peer” has generally meant disciplinary colleagues. In the evaluation of some forms of scholarly and professional work, “peer” is broadened to mean “consumer” or “user.”

References

Boyer, Ernest. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Diamond, Robert M. 1994. Serving on Promotion and Tenure Committees. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company.

Diamond, Robert M. and Bronwyn E. Adam, eds. 1993. Recognizing Faculty Work: Reward Systems for the Year 2000. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rice, R. Eugene. 1996. “Making a Place for the New American Scholar,” No. 1 of a working paper series. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.

Shulman, Lee S. 1993. “Teaching as Community Property,” Change, November-December: 6.