What’s in it for me? - Peer observation of teaching: Experiences from a primary school in Sweden

Abstract

Peer observations of teaching, POT, is a model for developing teachers to reflect on their teaching practice and discuss their ideas with colleagues. This article contributes to the knowledge of how peer observation of teaching can be used in a primary school as a model to develop teachers’ teaching practices, and highlights the challenges throughout the process. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection and analyzed by a qualitative content analysis with a deductive approach. The results of the study confirm that peer observation of teaching is, in fact, a useful model for metacognitive improvement of teaching and learning for teachers, provided that some necessary conditions are met, for example transparency in the planning of the process, inclusion of teachers in the decision-making process, and training in the process of providing and receiving feedback.