it helpful to place it in a historical context. The supervision of classroom instruction in U.S. public schools has continually evolved and continues to do so with an emphasis on student testing, teacher evaluation, and enhanced accountability. In 1976, in Classroom Supervision and Instructional Improvement, we wrote, “A look at the historical development of supervision indicates that supervision has sometimes been detrimental, sometimes helpful, sometimes useless, but usually maligned” (Bellon et al., 1976, p. 3). This observation still rings true.
Supervision of schools and classrooms in colonial America is often described as the period of administrative inspection, which was predominant until roughly 1900. During the early years of schooling in America, there was little concern for improving teachers. Supervisory practices were heavily top-down, and the remedy for poor instruction or classroom management was simply to replace the teacher—a cure currently regaining popularity.
During the first part of the 20th century, influenced by the work of Frederick Taylor and his promotion of scientific management as a means for improving organizational effectiveness and efficiency, supervision practices shifted to focus on research and measurement. The role of the supervisor during this period was to discover the best instructional and classroom management methods and procedures and then ensure that teachers utilized these approaches, often by making unannounced classroom observations.
Clearly, this kind of supervision was not a cooperative endeavor. That began to change in the 1930s, when human relations became emphasized. The human relations approach suggested that supervisors and teachers work together to help teachers realize their potential for improving instruction. The new democratic supervision diminished the authority of supervisors and their perceived threat to teachers. This wane was further influenced by the rapid expansion of schools after World War II, which overwhelmed administrators with administrative and maintenance issues and consequently left less time for instructional improvement.
The increased emphasis on management issues and proclivity to democratic thought led to a virtual absence of serious efforts to actively improve the classroom instruction of individual teachers. This hands-off approach has been referred to as a period of laissez-faire supervision (Bellon et al., 1976).
During the 1950s, new strategies such as microteaching, interaction analysis, and the use of performance objectives and goal setting were introduced and showed much promise as ways to help individual teachers improve their classroom performance. These initiatives set the stage for the Harvard-Newton Project at Harvard University, led by Morris Cogan (1973).
The Emergence of a Clinical Approach to Improving Classroom Instruction
The instructional improvement framework that Cogan and his associates developed is referred to as a clinical approach because of its emphasis on direct, objective, trained observation of classroom behaviors. In a clinical supervision approach, the supervisor (the observer) eschews personal bias and does not deal in generalities; rather, the observer focuses on specific behaviors of both students and teachers that occur during the lesson. The foundation of the clinical supervision process (which was refined by Jerry Bellon) is grounded in the following four basic assumptions that drive the entire process.
Assumption One
Teaching is a set of identifiable patterns of behavior. This assumption is based on the belief that together supervisors and teachers can identify specific, observable, recurring actions and techniques that form the core of a given teacher’s classroom instruction.
Assumption Two
When selected patterns of teaching behavior are changed, improvement of instruction can be achieved. Teaching is a set of complex, interconnected, and recurring verbal and physical actions. The underlying assumption is that improvement is more likely to occur when specific patterns of teaching are isolated for observation and study.
Assumption Three
The supervisor-teacher relationship must be built on mutual trust if change is to take place. Teaching is highly personal, and because it is so personal, meaningful change is more likely to take place in a climate of support and mutual trust. Building mutual support is the result of behavioral interactions, over time, between the supervisor and the teacher, rather than the supervisor merely verbalizing the need for trust. Trust is the result of people behaving in ways that are trustworthy. Primarily, this involves a consistency between what supervisors and teachers say and what they do.
Assumption Four
The improvement of instruction is the primary goal of supervision. The clinical supervision process is designed for the purpose of assisting teachers in the improvement of their instructional practices, not for the purpose of evaluating teachers. Any use of the clinical approach for evaluation is clearly secondary to the primary goal of improving classroom instruction.
The Clinical Supervision Process
The clinical supervision process described in Classroom Supervision and Instructional Improvement (Bellon et al., 1976) is built around four distinct but interconnected phases (figure 1.1, page 24). The process is also prescriptive in that within each phase are specific interactive steps that must be completed by the supervisor (observer) and the teacher.
Phase 1: Pre-Observation Conference
It is important for both the supervisor (or anyone who is conducting the observation) and the teacher to understand the context of the lesson that is to be observed and the role of the supervisor in the process. It is also important to recognize that this conference is an interactive dialogue between the supervisor and the teacher rather than a one-way conversation that is dominated by the supervisor. The role of the supervisor is to guide the conversation, ensuring that each of the following steps is performed.
1. Discuss the class setting: Teaching is contextual. Rarely is a lesson taught in isolation. This general introductory step provides an opportunity for the teacher to share with the supervisor how this lesson fits into a larger unit, including what has previously occurred and what is expected to follow. The teacher can also share any unique aspects of the lesson, the class, or specific students. Last, the supervisor and the teacher agree on the date and time that the observation will take place.
Source: Bellon et al., 1976.
FIGURE 1.1: Schematic representation of the supervisory process.
2. Clarify the objectives: What are the students expected to learn as a result of the lesson? During this conversation, the supervisor may need to help the teacher sharpen the objectives by making sure they are ultimately stated in learner outcomes—either content or process objectives.
3. Discuss learner characteristics and evaluation: This discussion extends the earlier conversation about the context of the lesson by focusing specifically on the readiness of the learners, as well as how the teacher will evaluate whether the students have attained the lesson objectives. In short, this discussion sharpens both the supervisor’s and the teacher’s understanding of the teacher’s pre- and post-assessment processes.
4. Identify strategies and materials to be used: In this step, the teacher shares with the supervisor the teaching strategies that he or she will use during the lesson, in essence describing
