Classroom visitation

We're all busy visiting each other's classrooms at my university, as part of the peer review process. Both of my classes have been visited, and I have visited two other professors' classes. I've been thinking a little about the peer review process.

The first class that I visited was the Discrete Math class of one of my younger colleagues. I've visited his class before, and I expected this one to be good. I wasn't disappointed. It started out fine. I'm making little notes to myself about what I observed, and mentally sorting them for relevance. My philosophy of peer observation is that I don't want to comment on anything that is (a) a reasonable choice, even if not the one that I would have made, (b) peculiar to the particular lesson that I happened to see, or (c) out of the instructor's control. In other words, I'm trying to limit myself to reasonably constructive criticism. Anyway, after about half the class, he started in on a complicated proof of an important theorem. I knew this was going to be tough, and I was simply amazed at how well he pulled it off. He walked the students carefully through it, explained his thinking as he went along, got them to contribute key ideas, dealt with the inevitable side tracks, and just generally did it so much better than I have ever done it that I was amazed. I knew he was good, but this visit convinced me that he is fantastic.

The second visit didn't go quite so well. The professor I was observing is about the same level as I am. In fact, she's got one year seniority. Our relationship has always been tepid at best. And I knew from prior experience working with her that she isn't likely to take any advice from me at all. I'm not sure if she never takes advice from anyone, but she certainly doesn't from me. So I knew going into it that it was a waste of time. I wasn't going to see anything so terribly bad that it would be worth writing up to put in her file, and I wasn't going to come up with any helpful suggestions that she would actually take. The class itself was fine. I did come up with a couple of suggestions that I might have passed on to a different colleague, but with this person, I'm not going to bother.

I didn't think that the two days when I was observed went very well. They weren't total disasters, but I just felt kind of off. Only one of the observers has given me feedback, and it was more positive than I felt. I was flattered, but I didn't really feel like it was an accurate reflection of what I'd done.

So, what is the purpose of peer review? Can you learn much about a fellow instructor from sitting in on one class? You could certainly tell if they were terrible, but we don't have any terrible instructors in our department (at least, not as far as I know.) Can we really tell the good from the great? I don't know. I suppose it's better than never having anyone observed in action, but I don't know if we are really generating a clear picture of anyone's strengths and weaknesses from one visit a semester.