Faculty perceived barriers and attitudes toward peer review of classroom teaching in higher education settings: A Meta-Synthesis

Peer review of teaching (PRT) is one of the various assessment methods employed to assess teaching effectiveness. The current meta-synthesis aims to summarize the faculty perceived barriers and attitudes toward PRT process. A systematic search was done across a range of databases, with 26 studies being found acceptable for data extraction. Because all the data were presented in narrative form only, no statistical test was applied to assess the significance, difference, or association between the variables. A thematic analysis was performed, which identified the following significant issues: the importance of the involvement of teaching experts in the PRT process, the content of PRT and quality of feedback, objectives associated with PRT, and faculty perceived barriers to PRT. Overall, it is shown that academic culture, time-related issues, and the need for restructured PRT guidelines are common barriers to a willingness to participate in PRT.