I enjoyed Tuesday’s session on the classroom as a private space. One of the key mantras of talking about education is that “it varies by discipline”, something which those of us who work for subject centres constantly remind each other, but are nevertheless apt to forget. In medicine, I learnt, is quite common to have to have a number of teachers with different medical and non-medical specialisms in the classroom together, so teaching is widely observed by peers as well as students. However, I enjoyed Laurie Taylor’s take on teaching observations:
Targett also denounced the HEA suggestion that university teachers should have their teaching observed "more than once". He believed that this proposal not only constituted an "invasion of privacy" but might also prove "seriously inhibiting" to the several hundred totally untrained and seriously underpaid postgraduate students who currently carried out the bulk of the university's teaching functions.
(Times Higher Education, 6th January)