What is Peer Review & Enhancement (PRE)?
Peer Review & Enhancement is an integral part of professional academic life for all staff who teach or support student learning. It is a key component of a strategy to ensure all staff are continuously engaged in developing their professional practice in a culture of peer enhancement and recognition of teaching at Sheffield Hallam University.
The purpose of these pages are to provide you with information about the principles and processes underpinning Peer Review & Enhancement (PRE) at Sheffield Hallam University.
Aims of Peer Review & Enhancement
PRE is a process through which individuals, with the support of colleagues, review and reflect on their academic practice, make plans for their professional development and carry these out.
PRE aims to:
- Improve teaching and student learning through a supportive, personalised process of peer review and the enhancement of professional practice.
- Promote and enhance the scholarship of learning and teaching through reflective practice.
- Link appropriately with appraisal and professional development to create a coherent development and review cycle supported by personal scholarly activity time.
- PRE aims to address the needs of individuals, teams, professional groups and inter-professional groups, the Institution and Professional and Statutory Regulatory Bodies. Its purpose is to promote, share and enable innovation in good teaching and to encourage staff to recognise and respond to changes affecting higher education as important contexts for professional development.
- As such PRE needs to be integrated in academic practice and valued by all as a developmental process that draws and builds upon existing expertise, processes and documentation.
Expectations of Peer Review & Enhancement activities
The Peer Review & Enhancement process should:
- Involve all staff who have a student-facing role teaching or supporting student learning, including those in part-time roles.
- Relate primarily to the individual's professional development needs.
- Locate individual needs within the context of the University Strategy and related college, school/institute and course team priorities.
- Relate to any aspect of learning, teaching and assessment.
- Be based on a constructive dialogue amongst peers.
- Inform appraisal and ongoing development planning.
- Ultimately seek to develop consistent good practice amongst teaching teams.
- Be simple and efficient to operate, linking with existing processes where possible, i.e. module and course review, appraisal, professional recognition, other CPD activities, and curriculum design and approval.
- Lead to the dissemination of good practice.
- Contribute to claims for professional recognition, the need to evidence good standing as professional academics, and to progress academic careers.
- Be co-ordinated by key individuals in colleges or schools/institutes.
Key Principles
Read more about the key principles of Peer Review and Enhancement
