Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching is hosting an “Open Dores: Two Days of Teaching Visits.” A program very similar to the Teaching Squares at Stetson. It raises an interesting question: Why has something so public (teaching) evolved into a private enterprise?
I’ve long been in favor of teachers visiting each other’s classrooms, and not just for the purpose of evaluation. For many of us in higher ed, what we do in the classroom is professional activity observed only by our students, and we seldom (or never) get to see how our colleagues go about the work of teaching. Sometimes we’ll be able to read others’ assignments, if they’re posted online or — as in my department — accidentally left in the photocopy machine. But actually watching and learning from in-class activities led by someone else is all too rare, in my experience.
Read the entire post on the ProfHacker blog hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education