Table Of ContentSupervision
in
teacher education
Supervision
in
teacher education
A COUNSELLING AND
PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH
○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○
EDGAR STONES
METHUEN & CO. LTD: LONDON
First published in 1984 by British Library
Methuen & Co. Ltd Cataloguing in Publication Data
11 New Fetter Lane, London Stones, Edgar
EC4P 4EE Supervision in teacher education.
1. Teachers—In-service
This edition published in the Taylor & training—Great Britain
Francis e-Library, 2003. I. Title
370’.7’330941 LB2157.G7
© 1984 Edgar Stones
ISBN 0-203-47258-6 Master e-book
All rights reserved. No part of this ISBN
book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical or other
means, now known or hereafter ISBN 0-203-78082-5 (Adobe
invented, including photocopying eReader Format)
and recording, or any information ISBN 0-416-34980-3 (Print Edition)
storage or retrieval system, without ISBN 0-416-34990-0 Pbk
permission in writing from the
publishers.
Contents
Introduction vii
1 The way we are now 1
2 Supervision reviewed 13
3 Aims and objectives 36
4 Pedagogical skills 50
5 Pedagogy of supervision 66
6 Instrumentation in supervision 77
7 The new supervisor: 1 93
8 The new supervisor: 2 110
9 Towards the compleate supervisor 130
References 153
Index 161
v
Introduction
Supervise: (1) To direct or oversee; (2) To watch over so as to
maintain order
Counsel: to give advice or guidance to
Seated one day at the typewriter making notes on supervision,
when the machine hiccupped and produced super-vision. In a blinding
flash I knew what it was all about. The qualification for becoming
a supervisor was super-vision. Further thought produced an analysis
of super-vision. What were its constituent skills? Naturally enough
they all seemed to be connected with sight. In the first place a
person with super-vision would need to have acute eyesight to see
what was happening in the classroom. Second, a person would need
insight to understand the significance of what was happening, foresight
to see what could be happening, hindsight to see what should have
happened and didn’t, and second sight to know how to get what
should have happened and didn’t to happen next time. As may be
inferred, I consider supervision a fairly complex activity.
Most training institutions are not troubled with my hang-ups. It
seems that they believe that super-vision is inherited or, at any rate,
innate. By and large it is detected on interview when candidates are
quizzed on a variety of subjects usually related to the disciplines
they will be asked to lecture in.
The first task I ever had as a neophyte supervisor of student
teachers was to arrange transport to get them to their practice schools.
A friendly colleague inducted me into the mysteries of timetabling
vii
viii Introduction
and shrewd dealing with coach companies so that with application
I eventually became reasonably competent at getting the students to
the right place at the right time. When I failed to do so, the fact was
made clear by both students and colleagues. On the other hand,
nobody ever thought it necessary to advise me about the supervision
of the students under my charge. I suppose this was because I had
come to the college from school teaching and therefore should know
about these things. In retrospect, if the college had taken the same
line of reasoning about my other activities, I could have been spared
the induction into the transport arranger part of my role because I
had had experience of travelling on buses.
There may be another reason for this experience. My colleagues
may have felt diffident about attempting to induct someone into a
role that was ill defined and very little understood. Although this
was never made explicit, I suspect that it was an important factor.
That experience was many years ago but things have changed
uncomfortably little since then, and the supervision of student
teachers is still a very much neglected subject despite its centrality
to the whole process of teacher education.
The preoccupation with administrative detail that I experienced
is just one aspect of the messiness of the conception of the role of
supervisor. I discuss others later. However, in the discussion that
follows, I take the implicit dilemma posed in the two definitions at
the beginning and suggest means whereby it might be resolved. In
the process the appropriateness of the first definition is questioned
and the implications of the latter analysed and appraised. Commonly
held conceptions of the role of a supervisor as someone whose sole
function is to go into schools to observe student teachers and make
suggestions about their teaching are fundamentally questioned.
The appraisal suggests that the role of supervisor is more complex
than is normally acknowledged, but also that it can, and should, be
seen as a much higher level activity than it is currently. Possibilities
for the development of the role towards the production of more
effective teachers are discussed, with the main emphasis being placed
on forms of supervision that relate practical teaching and its appraisal
to theoretical studies.
The complexity of the role as proposed may appear formidable,
but I believe that that is the way supervision is, even though it is not
Introduction ix
currently so acknowledged. It may be that the task of supervision
needs reconceptualizing as a co-operative operation rather than a
lone ranger exercise. The book discusses these kinds of possibilities
and suggests ways that may help realize them, drawing on a decade’s
experience of supervisor training in which new approaches were
developed. That experience taught me the inappropriateness of the
current nomenclature, hence the sub-title of the book. I hope readers
will find the emphasis justified and come to share my prejudices.
A note on ‘training’
I have used the expression ‘teacher training’ throughout the book.
I should like to emphasize, however, that this usage is entirely for
convenience in referring to those aspects of teacher education that
are particularly concerned with the students’ preparation for
teaching. There is no implication of low level routine or drill type
activity; in fact the precise opposite is the case. The study of the
practice and theory of pedagogy is held to be as exacting and highly
educative an activity as any other aspect of a course of teacher
education.
