Creating shared spaces: developing teaching through peer supervision

Abstract

This article examines how university teachers from different disciplines and faculties collaborate by giving feedback on each other’s teaching. This collaborative activity, termed Peer Supervision Groups (PSG), is part of a faculty development course at a Norwegian university. Conceptually the study draws on activity theoretical notions of boundary crossing and boundary objects and is empirically based on observations of a PSG over a period of six months. The article examines how collaborative interactions about teaching across communities emerge in the PSG setting and how this arrangement can be improved for the benefit of developing teaching practices in higher education.