Teacher Education as Instructional Supervision

• In Event: 25.064 - Thinking About the Field: Supervision Scholars Think About Its Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Teacher educators have a complex set of tasks. They must teach content about human development, instructional practice, learning theory and more; they must model pedagogy; they must demonstrate how theory and practice come together; they must support, guide, coach—all with individuals who are just beginning to dig into the complexity of teaching. Each of these tasks involves some form of instructional support but rarely is this aspect of the work of teacher educators addressed. Thus, there is little information available about what aspects of teacher educators’ work carry on into teachers’ practice and lead to student achievement. The absence of such knowledge understandably leads to questions about whether teacher education actually makes a difference in new teachers’ practice. For example, Lortie’s (1978) finding that teachers generally draw on their apprenticeships of observation rather than on their teacher education programs has been confirmed many times over. Further, there are debates and questions about how to assess teacher education (see Gallagher, Smith, & Anderson, 2016, Pecheone & Chung, 2006; Pecheone & Stansbury, 1996).

Research on teacher education like that of Darling Hammond (2010), Feiman-Nemser (2001), Rust (2009), and others suggest that, at its best, preservice teacher education programs unpack like a time-release capsule over the first five years and beyond. The key to such integration is the opportunity to reflect on and consider one’s practice; and research by Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009), Feiman-Nemser (2001), Moir (1999) and others suggests that this is best done within a community of practice and over time. Hence, teacher education becomes not just a preservice experience but extends, in fact, across the professional life of a teacher. The question, then, becomes, not how to evaluate preservice teacher education but how to determine ways to support teachers’ on-going professional learning. From this perspective, the practice of teacher educators, now understood to be those engaged in the professional learning of teachers in both pre-and in-service milieus, becomes critically important.

In this paper, we focus in on the key roles played by teacher educators in a program that positions teacher inquiry as a core practice of learning to teach and, through inquiry groups, supports new teachers during their first years in classrooms (see Kumar, Pupik-Dean, and Bergey, 2012). Our data are drawn from 52 digital portfolios developed by elementary, middle school, and high school preservice students to document their professional learning over the course of the teacher education program. As well, we draw on interviews of 15 program graduates and their mentors who participate in a professional learning community. Using textual analysis framed by grounded theory, our intent is to determine those core practices of teacher educators—curriculum design, key assessments that scaffold students’ learning, mentoring relationships, etc.—that are cited and built upon by new teachers as essential to their bringing theory and practice together in their teaching. Information like this can help to move debates about the efficacy of teacher education toward genuine consideration of ways to enable teachers’ professional learning so as to support student achievement.

Author

• Frances O. Rust, University of Pennsylvania