The term “pedagogical solitude”—first coined by Lee Shulman in 1993—aptly captures the experience of many academics. Behind closed doors, instructors work in isolation, disconnected from their peers. While faculty are active participants in scholarly communities and engaged in collegial exchange about research findings, methods, goals and challenges, conversations about teaching rarely occur. This lack of dialogue not only negatively impacts teaching quality; it can lead to feelings of isolation and burnout.

Dorothe Bach, CTE associate director and professor, interviewed Matthew Lazzara, professor of chemical engineering and biomedical engineering, who set out to disrupt this pedagogical solitude by introducing “Teaching Triangles” into the chemical engineering department’s mentoring program. Lazzara initially had the idea after observing several of his mentees’ courses, "I have four [faculty mentees] … I went and observed a couple of their classes, and it struck me that nobody ever came and watched one of my classes, and we don't do that as part of our mentoring of each other as faculty. We don't usually observe each other's classes, but I think you can learn a lot if you do."

The Six Main Aims of Peer Observation (Martin & Double, 1998)

1. Improving or developing an understanding of personal approaches to curriculum delivery
2. Enhancing and extending teaching techniques through collaboration
3. Exchanging insights relating to the review of teaching performance
4. Expanding personal skills of self-reflection and evaluation
5. Developing curriculum planning skills in collaboration with peers and colleagures and,
6. Identifying areas in teaching practice with particular merit or in need of development.

The evaluation model involves a designated senior faculty member who observes and evaluates teaching for the purpose of making high-stakes judgments related to promotion, tenure, or retention (Gosling, 2013). The imbalance in status, the judgmental nature of the teaching observation, and the unidirectional manner in which feedback is provided may compromise the effectiveness of the model as a tool for improving teaching and learning (O'Keefe, 2009).

1. The developmental model involves an educational developer or an expert teacher acting as an observer for the purpose of providing feedback on how to improve teaching and learning. Here, the relationship of the observed to the observed faculty is based on the hierarchy of expertise.
2. The collaborative model involves colleagues who observe each other in a reciprocal process for the purpose of stimulating improvement in teaching and student learning through dialogue, and self and mutual reflection. The relationship between the observer and the observed faculty is based on equality, mutual trust, and respect, and must include confidentiality and the creation of a non-judgmental environment (Hammersley-Fletcher & Orsmond, 2005).
3. The hybrid model combines the formative approaches of developmental and collaborative PO and may be an optimal model (Yiend, et al., 2004). Given that the goal of collaborative PO is to support excellent teaching through dialogue and reflection on evidence-based practices, educational developers have an important role in bringing the complementary discourse of evidence-based instructional practices into the feedback-giving process of collaborative PO.

There are limited viewpoints in the literature about peer observation of teaching in higher education and how it can be an effective tool to improve the quality of instruction in the classroom (Bell, 2001; Bell, 2005; Bell & Mladenovic, 2005; Brancato, 2003; Chism, 2007; Huston & Weaver, 2008; Shortland, 2004; Shortland, 2010; Smith, Jones, Gilbert, & Wieman, 2013). This article examines literature associated with peer observation of teaching in higher education and offers practical support and guidance from first-person accounts in a larger-sized STEM academic unit (N = 45 teaching faculty) at a public land-grant high intensive research institution enrolling over 36,000 students. Faculty teaching practices play a critical role in student learning and there is always room for continuous improvement and development.

University teachers nowadays, as with many other professionals, are facing the challenges of lifelong learning to improve the quality of teaching in higher education. In America and the UK, Peer review of teaching(PRT) has increasingly been used in higher education for teachers' professional development and to inform personnel decisions such as promotion, contract renewal, tenure, or merit pay (Ackerman, Gross, & Vigneron, 2009; Martin & Double, 1998; Smith, 2012; Yon, Burnap, & Kohut, 2002). In a broader sense, PRT involves a comprehensive review of a teacher's course materials, teaching philosophy statement, and teaching practices (Chism, 2007; McMahon, Barrett, & O'Neill, 2007). In a narrower sense, it involves teachers observing lessons taught by colleagues, which is also known as peer observation of teaching (POT). Because PRT involves collaboration with colleagues who have a substantive understanding of teaching and of a particular subject matter (Arreola, 2007; Chism, 2007; Courneya, Pratt, & Collins, 2008; Hutchings, 1996), it is trusted as meaningful triangulation of student evaluation of teaching and self-reflection of the teachers themselves. Commonly-seen PRT practices include pre-review activities (e.g. PRT training, meetings between reviewer and reviewees); reviews (being observed by others or observing others in practice); giving and receiving feedback; reflection; and post-review activities (e.g. meetings between reviewer and reviewees, group debriefing, or action plan).