Review of Professional Practice RPP at Gloucestershire Vicky Bush

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Review of Professional Practice (RPP) at
GloucestershireVicky Bush

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Introduction

• Teaching observation replaced by review of
  professional practice, starting 2006
• Developed by Glos. University in collaboration
  with David Gosling, Head of Educational
  Development Services, University of East London.
• Collaborative, non-judgemental
• Independent from appraisal, promotion

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Conceptual framework

• Models of peer review
• Evaluation - judgemental
• Development feedback from expert
• Collaborative mutual process based on equality
  between reviewers and reviewed

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• Informed by literature on SoTL (Scholarship of
  Teaching and Learning)
• Boyer (1990) characterises scholarship as
• Communities of engagement
• Production of artefacts
• Willingness to subject ideas and practice to
  critical valuation
• Respect for recognised and appropriate principles
  of enquiry

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• Lee Shulman argues that
• we need scholarship that makes our work public
  and susceptible to critique. It then becomes
  community property, available for others to build
  upon. (Shulman, 1999 16)
• Requires encouragement of a culture of dialogue
  where teaching problems are not seen as a fault.

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Framework for RPP

• Facilitate talking about teaching in the broad
  (not just the performance)
• Consider the wide variety of processes to support
  or assess student learning

course design
assess-ment
lecture
tutorial
lab
small group work
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Reviewers responsibility

• Agree a topic
• Assist the staff member explore issues relating
  to topic
• Help reflect on issues
• Help explore constructive ways forward

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Responsibility of person being reviewed

• Identify topic(s) to focus review
• Identify relevant material
• Agree on appropriate review process
• Write a reflective statement after review
• Agree reflective statement with reviewer

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Review Process

• Three meetings review
• Focusing the review
• Conducting the review
• Post-review discussion
• Designed to promote dialogue rather than give
  feedback
• Nothing taken for granted
• Leading questions avoided
• Related to implicit or explicit theories of
  teaching and learning
• Constructing the reflective statement
  (confidential) and RPP summary (public)

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Finally

• Model has been trialled but will be used in
  semester 2, 2006 for first time in Computing
  dept.
• So far, only two of us have trained but it is
  planned for all of us to undergo training so
  everyone can be a reviewer.

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Where to Get More Information

• On Gloucestershire universitys RPP model
  http//www.glos.ac.uk/adu/clt/rpp/
• Shulman, L.S. (1999) Taking Learning Seriously.
  Change 11-17
• On peer observation of teaching
  http//www.heacademy.ac.uk/988.htm