Preservice Teacher Supervision as Service Work: An Effect of Neoliberal Reforms

• In Event: The Role of the Supervisor in the Changing K–12 Landscape

Abstract

For decades, post-secondary institutions have outsourced preservice teacher (PST) supervision to contingent faculty, ignored supervisors, and overlooked PST supervision in tenure and promotion decisions. Thus, PST supervision has become institutional service work. This case study used survey, interview, and document analysis to understand how supervisors and administrators in one teacher education department positioned supervisors’ work as service. The findings revealed that supervisors positioned their work as professional, financial, and emotional service, and the institution positioned supervisors’ work as service by providing no institutional rewards for supervising and expecting supervisors to enact roles not officially required of them. Study implications are that institutions should resist notions of supervision as service by acknowledging its complexity and provide commensurate compensation for supervisors.

Author

• Sarah Capello, Radford University