Expanding the View of Instructional Supervision: Shared and Borrowed Concepts from Supervision of Counseling

Abstract

hose of us who make our living studying the field of supervision of teaching and transmitting our findings to aspiring supervisors frequently have not noticed that our colleagues in other fields such as counseling have been engaging in similar pursuits of knowledge. In fact, while we may be part of the same department and have offices in close proximity, there is little conversation regarding what our areas of research have in common. It is due in part to this lack of conversation that this paper is written with the intent of identifying areas of commonality in the two fields as well as what we might borrow from each other. Bernard noted that one of the omissions in the supervision of counselors has been a lack of the systematic use of the expertise of teacher education specialists (4). One might also add the reverse of this statement-that one of the omissions in the supervision of teachers has been a lack of use of the expertise of counselor education specialists. Current approaches in the supervision of instruction range from a very person-oriented approach to the more traditional trait-oriented approaches (1). A similar continuum of approaches can be identified in the supervision of counseling and counselors. Figure 1 illustrates this continuum for the two fields. The role of the supervisor moves from a direct approach for carrying out the supervisory process in the trait-oriented and dynamic approaches to an indirect approach as one moves to the right along the continuum. This is not to say that one can equate trait-oriented approaches with dynamic approaches or person-oriented approaches with facilitative approaches, but rather that they share at least a similar perspective regarding the role of the supervisor.