Conceptual, Procedural, and Emotional Mentoring: Reframing of Supervisor Learning to Practice to Learning From Practice

• In Event: The Development of Teachers: Support From Preservice Through In-Service

Abstract

Understanding how supervisors learn and what they learn is important. The literature suggests that supervisor professional development has occurred through training, inquiry, and role-taking experiences. This qualitative case study adds to this literature because it examined a novice supervisor’s perceptions of her learning throughout her first year as a supervisor in a professional development school context. The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the processes and structures of her learning in a community of practice. The processes include literal and figurative conceptual, procedural, and emotional mentoring, and the structures were both informal and formal and usually collaborative and social in nature. The findings have implications for supporting supervisor learning, supervisor professional development, and supervisor preparation.

Authors

• Rebecca West Burns, University of South Florida

• Bernard J. Badiali, The Pennsylvania State University