THE INFLUENCE OF THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SCHOOL CONTEXT ON SUPERVISORY PRACTICE: A UNIVERSITY...

Journal of Cumculum and Supemision 353Summer 2003, Vol. 18, No. 4, 353-379

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PROFESSIONAL

DEVELOPMENT SCHOOL CONTEXT ON

SUPERVISORY PRACTICE: A UNIVERSITY

SUPERVISOR'S AND INTERNS' PERSPECTIVES

BELINDA GIMBERT, The Pennsylvania State UniversityJAMES F. NOLAN JR., The Pennsylvania State University

ABSTRACT: This report presents a phenomenological case study that examined theinfluence of a professional development school (PDS) context on the university su-

pervisor's practice from the perspectives of a university faculty member and teachercandidates. Several research questions framed this study: How do PDS intems por-tray and interpret university supervisory practices that emerge from the PDS con-text? How does the university supervisor understand his supervisory practices andbehavior? What role does context play? Given the differing contexts of a traditionalstudent teaching experience and a PDS internship, do the process of supervisionand the role of a university supervisor change?

In this particular school-university partnership context, a university supervisorwas renamed a professional development associate (PDA). Although many aspectsof the university supervisor's practice remained stable, meaningful differences werefound in the work of a professional development associate. The data in this studypoint sharply to the heightened role of the PDA in the supervisory process. Appear-ing quite different in the PDS context were the following elements: readiness and re-lationship building with the teacher candidates; the stages of supervision that un-folded during the yearlong experience; the PDA's knowledge of and focus onindividual children; the role of goal setting and evaluation; and the flexible structureof the intemship that supported an individual intem's process of leaming to teach.The intern-PDA supervisory relationship became a means of professional growth forboth the teacher candidates and the university supervisor. Intems' personal meaningsof the function of university supervision shifted from thinking of a university super-visor's practices as being "apart from" to being "a part of " their professional growth.

A lthough the role of the university supervisor in the studentteaching triad has existed for at least 70 years, much ambigu-

1N vity continues to surround the role in terms of how it is carriedout and with what consequences. Some researchers have describedthe positive contributions that the university supervisor brings to thetriad and the important role that the supervisor plays in shaping the

A University Supervisor's and Interns' Perspectives

quality of the field experience for the preservice teacher.' Such stud-ies recognize the constructive character of this supervisory positionand defend the traditional relationships, responsibilities, and ritualsthat it perpetuates. Others have suggested that the university super-visor plays the least important role in the triad and even go so far asto suggest that the university supervisor has a detrimental impact onthe experience and should be removed from the supervision triad.2Slick, furthermore, has argued that the university supervisor and thecooperating teacher rarely enjoy more than a superficial relationshipand most often have inconsistent perspectives on the teaching en-terprise.3 Cole and Knowles assert that the university supervisormost often becomes the summative evaluator who has insignificantimpact on the development of the preservice teacher.4 Repeatedly,researchers have called for a clearer delineation of the roles of thosewho are directly responsible for supervising student teachers.5 Giventhe conflicting conclusions drawn by researchers concerning the uni-versity supervisor's role, a reasonable summation is that this role andits contributions to preservice teacher education are largely idiosyn-cratic. Additionally, the supervisory process in this situation appears

'See, for example, Diane Y. Silva and Nancy F. Dana, "Collaborative Supervi-sion in a Professional Development School," Journal of Curiculum and Supervi-sion 16 (Summer 2001): 305-321; Mary Ann Blank and Betty Heathington, "The Su-pervisory Process: A Consistent Approach to Help Student Teachers Improve," TheTeacher Educator 22 (Spring 1987): 2-14; Brian Kahn, "Portrait of Success: Cooper-ating Teachers and the Student Teaching Experience," Action in Teacher Fducation22 (Winter 2001): 48-56.

2Edith Guyton and D. John McIntyre, 'Student Teaching and School Experi-ences," in Handbook of Research in Teacher Education, ed. W. Robert Houston(New York: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 514-534; Nancy Zimpher, Gary de Voss, andDavid Nott, "A Closer Look at University StLdent Teacher Supervision," journal ofTeacher Education 31 (Summer 1980): 11-15.

3Susan Slick, "Assessing vs. Assisting: The Supervisor's Roles in the ComplexDynamics of the Student Teaching Triad," Teaching and Teacher Fducation 13 (Oc-tober 1997): 713-726.

4Ardra Cole and J. Gary Knowles, "University Supervisors and Pre-serviceTeachers: Clarifying Roles and Negotiating Relationships," The Teacher Educator 30(Fall 1995): 44-56.

5See, for example, Robert Emans, "Implementing the Knowledge Base: Re-designing the Function of the Cooperating Teacher and the College Supervisor,"Journal of Teacher Education 34 (July-August 1983): 14-18; Peter P. Grimmnett andHarold C. Ratzlaff, "Expectations for the Cooperating Teacher Role," Journal ofTeacher Education 37 (November-December 1986): 41-50; Kenneth Zeichner andKen Teitelbaum, "Personalized and Inquiry-orientecl Teacher Education: An Analy-sis of Two Approaches to the Development of Curricultm for Field-based Experi-ences," Journal of Education and Teaching 8 (September-October 1982): 95-177.

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Belinda Gimbert and James F. Nolan Jr.

to be heavily dependent on the personalities of the triad's membersand the context in which the student teaching occurs.

The influence of a specific student teaching context on the roleof the university supervisor has been relatively unexamined in theliterature on student teaching. Goldsberry's portrayal of the "idio-syncratic rather than generalizable (among the participants) natureand benefits of involvement in supervision" highlights the need forresearch to focus on in-depth exploration of how particular supervi-sory functions are embedded in context.6 What role does contextplay? Given a different context, do the process of supervision andthe role of the university supervisor change?

This study explored the process of preservice teacher supervi-sion in a relatively new context: the professional development school(PDS) relationship. Specifically, the researchers examined the influ-ence of the PDS context on the university supervisor's practice fromthe perspectives of a university faculty member and preservice teach-ers, that is, PDS interns.

THE CONTEXT

Spurred by recommendations from commissions, national re-ports, and studies of teacher education, school-university partner-ships increasingly have developed varying models of professionaldevelopment schools and professional practice schools for about thelast 10 years. 7 Through their efforts to integrate school-university in-ternships in public schools, teacher education programs across theUnited States have attempted to alter the character and quality ofpreservice teacher preparation.

In their examination of these multifarious models of school-uni-versity partnerships, Lawrence and Dubetz highlight six consistentgoals that link efforts to reform teacher preparation and to redefineK-12 schools as agents for educational change.8 First, enhance the ed-

6Lee Goldsberry, "Teacher Involvement in Supervision," in Handbook of Re-search on Scbool Supervision, ed. G. Firth and E. Pajak (New York: Simon andSchuster Macmillan, 1998), p. 444.

7See, for example, John Goodlad, Teachers for Our Nation s Schools (San Fran-cisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990); The Holmes Group, Tomorrow's Schools: Principles of theDesigns of Professional Development Schools (East Lansing, MI: Author, 1990); Mar-sha Levine, Professional Practice Schools: Linking Teacher Education and School Re-form (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992).

8Alexandria T. Lawrence and Nancy Dubetz, "The Urban Collaborative: Im-proving Student Leaming Through a Professional Development Network," Action inTeacher Education 22 (Winter 2001): 1-14

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ucational experiences for all children. 9 Second, ensure high-qualityfield experiences for prospective teachers that promote aspiring toprinciples of learning for all school students.10 Third, extend theknowledge base of teaching and learning. 11 Fourth, undertake col-laborative research in which university faculty and school-based prac-titioners partner to explore such issues as teacher preparation, pro-fessional growth, and the improvement of supervisory and mentoringpractices through inquiry.'2 Fifth, further the professional growth ofschool and university-based teachers and teacher educators.13 Last, in-tensify the relationship between K-12 schools and the sociopoliticalcommunities in which they grow.14 Actualizing these possibilities ap-

9See, for example, Stephanie Knight, Donna Wiseman, and Donna Cooner,"Using Collaborative Teacher Research to Determine the Impact of Professional De-velopment School Activities on Elementary Children's Math and Writing Outcomes,"Journal of Teacher Education 51 (Januarv-Februarv 2000): 26-38; Gerald J. Pine,"Making a Difference: A Professional Development School's Impact on StudentLearning" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Re-search Association, New Orleans, LA, 2000).

10Ismat Abdal-Haqq, Professional Development Schools: Weighing the Evidence(Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1998); Belinda Gimbert, "Interns' Lived Experi-ence of Mentor Teacher Supervision in a Professional Development School Con-text," Teacher Education and Practice 14 (Spring/Summer 2001): 55-81; BrendaWalling and Mark Lewis, "Development of Professional Identity Among ProfessionalDevelopment School Pre-service Teachers: Longitudinal and Comparative Analysis,"Action in Teacher Fducation 22 (Summer 2000): 63-72.

"1See, for example, Ismat Abdal-Haqq, Professional Development Schools:Weighing the Evidence (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1998); David M. Byrdand D. John McIntyre, Research on Professional Development Schools (ThousandOaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1999).

12See, for example, Nancy Dana, Diana Silva, Belinda Gimbert, Jim Nolan,Carla Zembal-Saul, Ron Tzur, Lucy Mule, and Lynne Sanders, "Developing New Un-derstandings of PDS Work: Better Problems, Better Questions," Action in TeacherEducation 22 (Winter 2001): 15-25; Nancy J. Lauter, Professional DevelopmentSchools: Confronting Realities (New York: National Center for Restructuring Educa-tion, Schools, and Teaching, 1998).

'3See, for example, Marsha Levine, Professional Practice Schools: LinkingTeacher Education and School Reform (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992);Diane Y. Silva and Nancy F. Dana, "Collaborative Supervision in the ProfessionalDevelopment School," Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 16 (Summer 2001):305-321.

"4See, for example, Linda Darling-Hammond, Professional DevelopmentSchools: Schools for Developing a Profession (New York: Teachers College Press,1994); The Holmes Group, Tomorrow's Schools: Principles of the Design of Profes-sional Development Schools (East Lansing, MI: Author, 1990); Linda Valli, DavidCooper, and Lisa Frankes, "Professional Development Schools and Equity: A Criti-cal Analysis of Rhetoric and Research," in Review of Research in Education (Wash-ington, DC: American Educational Research Association, 1997), pp. 251-304.

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pears to create new kinds of work for the participants, who adoptmultiple roles that include teacher educator, classroom teacher, learner,and teacher inquirer.

Much of the emergent research focuses on description and cel-ebration of the successes of school-university partnerships.15 How-ever, in their daily efforts to assess both process and progress,school-university partners face problems. Because the vision of suchschool-university partnerships assumes that collaborative efforts toprepare new teachers "create learning opportunities that are differ-ent from and richer than the opportunities either the school or theuniversity can provide alone,"16 issues emerge from the context ofpartnerships. 17 Almost every published report has called for furtherstudies that focus on gaps in the research on partnerships. Researchquestions have been proposed that address topics such as relation-ships within the PDS community, effects of partnership work onchildren's academic achievement, impact of school-university part-nership on attrition rates of beginning teachers, the professional de-velopment of inservice teachers, and problems that historically un-derrepresented institutions encounter.

In response, this study examined supervisory relationships thatwere portrayed by preservice teachers and a university supervisorwho worked through a particular PDS experience. Like most educa-tional concepts that become popular over a rather short period oftime, contemporary professional development schools appear to beas different as they are similar. Therefore, a description of the spe-cific PDS relationship involved in this study is useful.

15See, for example, Richard W. Clark, Effective Professional DevelopmentSchools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999); Nancy E. Hoffman, W. Michael Reed,and Gwen Socol Rosenbluth, Lessons from Restructuring Experiences: Stories ofChange in Professional Development Schools (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1997); Marsha Levine and Roberta Trachtman, Making Professional Develop-ment Schools Work: Politics, Practice, and Policy (New York: Teachers CollegePress, 1997).

16Marilyn Cochran-Smith, "The Power of Teacher Research in Teacher Educa-tion," in Teacber Education and Educational Reform, ed. Sandra Hollingsworth andHugh Sockett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 149.

"7See, for example, Nancy Dana, Diana Silva, Belinda Gimbert, Jim Nolan,Carla Zembal-Saul, Ron Tzur, Lucy Mule, and Lynne Sanders, "Developing New Un-derstandings of PDS Work: Better Problems, Better Questions," Action in TeacherEducation 22 (Winter 2001): 15-25; Robert V. Bullough, James R. Birrell, JanetYoung, D. Cecil Clark, Lynette Erickson, Rodney S. Earle, Joy F. Campbell, LaurieHansen, and M. Winston Egan, "Paradise Unrealized: Teacher Educators and theCosts and Benefits of School/University Partnerships," Journal of Teacher Education50 (November-December 1999): 281-390.

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Early Development of This Particular PDS

The professional development school relationship between ThePennsylvania State University (PSU) and the State College AreaSchool District (SCASD) developed slowly over an eight-year period.This partnership emerged from the shared vision of university facultyand administrators and the school district's principals and teachers.Members of this community believed that their collaborative effortscould yield better teacher preparation opportunities for preserviceteachers and enhanced learning environments for children. Theschool faculties and the university faculty members spent a yearplanning for the initial pilot year of actual PDS work that began inAugust 1998 in two of the district's elementary schools. A successfulpilot year led to the addition of two more elementary schools to thePDS community for the next school year. Thus, the Professional De-velopment School Partnership includes four elementary schools.Though the four schools are individualized and different from eachother in several respects, the PDS work in the four schools is builtupon the same values, beliefs, and structures. Inquiry on the part ofinterns, mentor teachers, and university faculty (called professionaldevelopment associates, or PDAs) is a core component of this PDScollaborative effort. A second core principle is this PDS community'scommitment to collaborative decision making and problem solving.

Current Structure of the SCASD-PSU ProfessionalDevelopment School

A yearlong internship for senior undergraduate students is thecore of the PDS program. These teacher candidates, selected jointlyby the mentor teachers and university faculty members, forego theuniversity calendar and spend the entire school year in a participat-ing elementary school. Prospective interns apply for the opportunityto complete during the year 30 credits of methods coursework inmathematics, science, social studies/literacy education, and classroomlearning environments, as well as 27 credits of student teaching. Stu-dents begin their internship with a two-week 'Jumpstart" session oncampus during mid-August. This session serves as an orientation tothe internship, an opportunity for community building, and an intro-duction to the methods courses that interns take during the fall se-mester. Officially, the interns begin to work with their mentor teacheron the initial day of inservice activities for the school district. How-ever, many of the interns actually start working with their mentors be-fore that time in order to help prepare the classrooms for the firstday of school. From September through January, interns spend everyweekday in school with their mentor teacher. They leave the class-

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room at 2:30 p.m. three days each week to meet for their methodscourses that are held on site in the schools from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.These courses are designed and cotaught by teams of mentor teach-ers and university faculty through the auspices of a Lucent Tech-nologies Foundation grant. During the second half of the year Uan-uary through June), interns focus on developing their classroomteaching style, planning and implementing curriculum, and under-standing how to assess and support children's learning. Additionally,they engage in teacher inquiry projects focused on some aspect oftheir own teaching practice.

METHODOLOGY OF THIS STUDY

This qualitative research employed the procedures of a phenome-nological case study."8 Phenomenological inquiry allowed the re-searchers to discover the common structure underlying the preserviceteachers' and the university supervisor's experience of supervision inthis PDS internship. The participants' supervisory experiences de-fined the bounded case study."9 The unit of analysis was the individ-ual intern's and the university supervisor's perceptions of supervision.

PARTICIPANTS

This study examined the phenomenon of supervision in theprofessional development school context from the perspectives ofsix interns and one university supervisor, called a professional de-velopment associate. In this article, pseudonyms identify the six in-terns by first names: Caran, Colleen, Diana, Mark, Kathryn, and Sally.The PDA is referred to by his last name, Nolan. Additionally, thereader will note that some quotations from the interns refer to an-other PDA, Gimbert (last name also).

The interns were 6 of 27 senior education undergraduates whocompleted a yearlong internship in this PDS partnership during1999-2000. All of the interns were from Pennsylvania. Two of them,Diana and Kathryn, grew up in rural communities. Two others, Caranand Sally, attended suburban K-12 public schools. Only one intern,Colleen, had experienced all her education in an urban setting. Mark,the only male in this group, was a nontraditional student who previ-ously had worked in the music industry.

"8Clark E. Moustakas, Phenomenological Research Methods (Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage Publications, 1994).

' 9Sharan B. Merriam, Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Ed-ucation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998).

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THE UNIVERSITY SUPERVISOR'S ROLE

As noted above, the university supervisor in the professionaldevelopment school partnership is referred to by the designation"professional development associate." The decision to use the label"PDA" instead of "university supervisor" was intended to help thestakeholders in the PDS effort recognize that a supervisor in this sit-uation plays a different role from that played by former studentteaching supervisors. Although PDAs continue to engage in class-room supervision activities, they are interested in the developmentof the intern, the mentor teacher, and the university supervisor-indeed, every member of the supervision team triad. Further, thisrole is broader than that of in-class supervision and extends to allteachers in the school, not only those who serve as mentor teachersand supervisors.

Previous Student Teaching Supervision

Nolan, the PDA whose experiences are reported in this study,has served as a supervisor of student teachers for 17 years for threedifferent colleges or universities. His doctoral preparation and muchof his subsequent writing have focused on the use of reflective su-pervision and peer coaching as vehicles for helping teachers to be-come more self-directed, more analytical about their own practice,and better problem solvers. Since 1983, Nolan supervised more than100 student teachers in a variety of grade levels and subject areas andserved as the director of a field experience office for three years. Dur-ing that time he supervised 25 student teaching supervisors acrossPennsylvania. Nolan viewed himself as a very good supervisor whowas instrumental in the professional development of the preserviceteachers with whom he worked. He tried to remain true to the goalsof reflective supervision and used a variety of supervisory interven-tions to accomplish those purposes. Thus, Nolan began this PDS ex-perience with many "wonderings" concerning how his previous workas a student teaching supervisor would relate to the new context andthe new types of relationships the experience sought to develop.

PDS Supervision Role

Nolan played several roles within this PDS context. He servedas the co-coordinator for the PDS project in all four schools. Thisrole entails much liaison and organizational work with the variousstakeholders (university faculty, mentors, interns, principals, centraloffice personnel, department head, and dean of the College of Edu-cation) in the PDS effort as well as responsibility for overseeing the

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selection process for the next year's interns. He also served as theteam leader and instructor of record for the methods course on class-room learning environments. Finally, he served as the building liai-son who conducted monthly meetings with the mentors and theprincipal in one of the four PDS sites.

This study focused on Nolan's work as a PDA responsible forthe direct supervision of four interns in three different schools. Hiswork with these interns began in August and continued throughJune. Because his entire teaching load was focused on the PDS, hevisited each intern's classroom two or three times a week, spendingabout an hour or more during each visit.

DATA SOURCES

Participant observation, extensive field notes, document analy-sis, and six semistructured individual interviews enabled the re-searchers to portray the supervisory process from the interns' per-spective. The transcriptions were analyzed using NVIVO computersoftware.20 Multiple readings identified categories that emergedwithin each intern's narration. 21 Line-by-line analysis of the transcriptsresulted in the definition and construction of conceptual categories at"free nodes" and then to "nodes" in the tree-structure. Additional dataanalyses probed for contradicting and sanctioning evidence for theemerging themes.22 Finally, the researchers amassed assertions fromthe analyses through support provided by NVIVO's concept-modelingfunction.

The primary data sources used to capture the university super-visor's perspective were journal entries, notes taken at various meet-ings and from informal conversations, and the observations and con-ference notes made during verbal interactions with the interns.Although this data collection may not be described as systematic, itreasonably may be viewed as what Garman has called "reflectionthrough recollection. "23

Although the findings of this study highlight differences be-tween supervision in a traditional student teaching setting and that

20Lynn Richards, NVIVO Qualitative Software for Researcb (Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage Publications, 1999).

2IMichael Q. Patton, Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods (ThousandOaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1990).

22Frederick Erickson, "Qualitative Methods in Research on Teaching," inHandbook of Research on Teaching, ed. M. C. Whittrock (New York: Macmillan,1986), pp. 119-161.

2 3Noreen Garman, "Reflection, the Heart of Clinical Supervision: A Rationalefor Professional Practice," Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 2 (Spring 1986):1-14.

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in the PDS context, the authors do not mean to imply the two situ-ations are completely different. At least as many, if not more, simi-larities exist, as do differences. Some examples of the similarities insupervisory practices in the two contexts from the university super-visor's perspective offer particular implications. For example, theuniversity supervisor's espoused platform of supervision has notchanged despite the shift from a traditional context to the PDS con-text. Nolan believed that supervision should continue to be inquiry-oriented and data-based, to focus on the consequences of teachingpractice for learners, and to aim at helping teachers become morereflective, more self-directed, more analytical, and better problemsolvers. Further, he espoused that supervision should be develop-mentally appropriate, model the teaching-learning process that headvocates for students, and be a vehicle for a supervisor's growth.Nolan enacted his moral responsibility to ensure that learners are notharmed by teaching practices of preservice teachers and correctedsuch behavior when an incident occurred.

In the PDS situation, Nolan engaged in ongoing cycles of ob-servation and conferencing in which the preservice teacher played akey role in determining the focus of the observations (at times thatwere developmentally appropriate). He still expected the preserviceteacher to become increasingly adept at analyzing observational dataand using it to make decisions about teaching practice. Nolan foundno more time available for pre-conferencing, data analysis, or thepost-conference in the PDS context than he did in the traditional stu-dent teaching context. He continued to use weekly journals as a toolfor ongoing discussion of the preservice teacher's espoused platformand modifications to it as the teaching experience grew over time.Finally, Nolan was still charged with the role of summative evalua-tor in both determining who was recommended for teacher certifi-cation and assigning grades to the preservice teachers.

These examples confirm that many aspects of a university su-pervisor's practice remain unchanged in the PDS context. However,findings discussed in the next section identify other ways that thePDS context has resulted in significant shifts in supervisory practice.

FINDINGS

Within-case analysis of the interns' and the university supervi-sor's perspectives illuminates the heightened role of the PDA in thesupervisory process. In contrasting Nolan's experience as a PDA inthe professional development school context with his previous ex-perience as a university supervisor in traditional student teachingprograms, several differences became apparent. The most striking

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differences were in the areas of readiness and relationship buildingwith the teacher candidates; the stages of supervision that unfoldedduring the yearlong experience; the PDA's knowledge of and focuson individual children; the role of goal setting and evaluation; andthe flexible structure of the internship that supported an individualintern's process of learning to teach.

Readiness and Relationship Building

Teacher candidates' and the PDA's perceptions of readiness build-ing in this particular PDS context were framed quite differently fromthat described by participants in a traditional student teaching situa-tion. Specifically, interns and the PDA identified many encountersthat nurtured readiness for supervision.2 4

Emerging from the PDS interns 'perspectives of readiness and re-lationship building were two constructs not found in research on su-pervision in a traditional student teacher setting. First, interns statedthat the process of relationship building with their respective PDAgreatly supported readiness for supervision. Two examples of evi-dence support this claim.

Example #1: During the Jumpstart program in mid-August, in-terns were introduced to each other, to the PDAs, to the methodscourse instructors, and to some of the school district administrators.Interns expressed their surprise when university faculty memberssuggested that the interns refer to them by their first names and gaveout contact information with an invitation to phone them at home ifa significant issue arose. Diana, an intern, commented about the car-ing nature of this introductory period and highlighted the process of"community building between interns and professors." By the end ofthe two-week period, Diana stated, "I felt comfortable enough tophone my PDA if I had worries about my first day in school."

Example #2. During the first month, each intern described howhis or her respective PDA participated in the classroom, getting toknow them, the mentor teacher, and the children. Sally describedher PDA "joining in with the lessons. She spent time in our roomgetting to know the classroom routines and the children." Diana il-lustrated how Gimbert, her PDA, "sat on the floor, had a snack, and

24Morris Cogan, Clinical Supervision (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).The researchers believe that the most commonly ignored and undervalued stage ofthe original clinical supervision model articulated by Cogan is the process of build-ing readiness for clinical supervision. With the exception of a very well craftedpiece by Lee Goldsberry, 'Is Clinical Supervision Practical?" in Clinical Supervision:Collaborative 7eaching and Learning, ed. John Smyth (London: Croon Helm, Inc.,1986), pp. 137-153, readiness building has received scant research attention.

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enjoyed a read-aloud along with everyone else." The mentor teacherworking with the intern assigned Gimbert a role for morning meet-ings. To the children, Colleen and Mark described their PDA, Nolan,as "another teacher in the room." Colleen and Mark asserted, "It wasnot long before the children gave Nolan jobs to do."

The second construct identified the way interns portrayed theirrelationships with PDAs in this PDS setting. According to Gore, rela-tionships in the supervisory triad need to be "democratized." 25 In hisstudy of a cooperating teacher's role in a traditional student teach-ing setting, Ganser highlights the struggle between the cooperatingteacher and the university supervisor as to "who has more powerover the student teacher, who generally has no power whatsoever." 2 6

In the PDS context under study, the interns' portrayal of supervisionacknowledged that a hierarchy of power exists-this will always bethe case because the supervisor is ultimately responsible for the al-location of coursework grades and has overriding teaching expe-riences. However, the PDS interns highlighted mutual respect andprofessional camaraderie as important elements of the intern-PDA re-lationships. Diana described her relationship with her supervisor as"like nothing she had ever had before with college professors." Therelationships began as "one professional to another." As the intern-ship progressed, the intern-PDA relationships took on a collegialstance. Colleen stated:

I felt cared for and valued as a person and an intern. Whether they wereadministrators, colleagues, children, or parents, Nolan modeled for me howto develop collegial reciprocity with mentor(s) who have more power.

When trust was the founding ingredient of this relationship, prevail-ing struggles over who had the most power seemed to fade into mu-tual synergism that supported the intern's professional growth.

From the university supervisor's perspective, readiness buildingin the PDS context substantially altered the nature and developmentof supervisory relationships. As a traditional student teaching super-visor, Nolan was charged with the supervision of a group of studentsfor a 12- to 15-week period. Typically, student teachers began a stu-dent teaching semester with a one-day orientation to student teach-ing. Usually this orientation took place on campus, away from the

25Jennifer M. Gore. "Practicing What We Preach: Action Research and the Su-pervision of Student Teachers," in Issues and Practices in Inquiry-oriented TeacherEducation, ed. B. Robert Tabachnick and K. Zeichner (London: Falmer Press, 1991),pp. 253-272.

26Tom Ganser, "The Cooperating Teacher Role," 7Te Teacher Educator 31(Spring 1996): 294.

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schools. The day was spent getting to know one another and mak-ing sure that everyone understood all of the requirements for thestudent teaching semester. The next day, student teachers beganworking with their cooperating teachers. Usually Nolan visited eachclassroom during the initial week of the experience to make surethat the cooperating teacher was aware of the expectations and thatthe student teacher-cooperating teacher relationship was "off to agood start." Nolan met the students as a group for a seminar some-time during the first week. Student teachers started teaching duringthe second week of each semester, and Nolan began the process ofobservation and conferencing.

In the PDS context, Nolan had an opportunity to spend muchmore time building readiness with the interns for the process of super-vision. He spent six hours every day for two weeks with the internsin the Jumpstart program. The program included several community-building activities, and each intern created a time line depicting hisor her significant life events to that point in time. Next, the internsmoved into the schools with the expectation that they would not beresponsible for planning and implementing lessons for a substantialperiod of time. The interns spent much of their time getting ac-quainted with the children and helping to implement some learningactivities planned by the mentor teacher. During this first month ofschool, Nolan was in classrooms getting to know the mentor, the in-tern, and the children. He worked with individual children and smallgroups of learners and occasionally cotaught lessons with the men-tor teacher and the intern. Consequently, he became an acceptedmember of the classroom by all the participants and had a muchclearer picture of the context. Further, Nolan extended his relation-ship with the interns through their weekly field experience journalsand their work in the course on classroom learning environments thathe was coteaching. Before collecting any observational data or ask-ing the interns to analyze their own practice, Nolan already had apretty clear picture of what each of them hoped to stand for as ateacher. He had a lengthy amount of time to assess what opportuni-ties and challenges the classroom and school context would providethem as they attempted to enact those espoused platforms.

Another significant aspect of this readiness and relationship-building period was the clear establishment of Nolan's vulnerabilityas a teacher and a supervisor. As he worked with the children in theclassroom, interns and mentors quickly realized that he did not haveall the answers. Although Nolan generally did a good job, sometimeshe was not successful in achieving what he hoped for or even whatthe mentor teacher expected him to achieve in his interactions withthe children. One particular interaction in a 2nd grade classroom was

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significant. As Nolan was working with Matilda and her partner on amath activity, it became clear that the two children were not chang-ing roles as they had been asked to do by the mentor teacher. Nolanmentioned to them that the other children were all taking turns, onemanipulating the buttons and the other counting. Matilda replied,"We don't want to do that." They continued not to take turns as Nolansat silently for a minute. Finally he said, "You know, I really wouldlike you to take turns so that you both get a chance to do some count-ing." His desire was ignored. Nolan interrupted again, saying, "Ma-tilda, I know you prefer not to take turns, but you must." Nolan feltrather proud at this point that he had modeled his own hierarchy ofclassroom management intervention, beginning with a neutral obser-vation, moving to a polite request, and eventually to a command. AsNolan was contemplating how well he had done, Matilda put herhead down on the desk and muttered quite loudlv, "No wonder I hateteachers," and decided simply to rest. Nolan's reactions were cut offby the timer that signaled the end of the activity.

The intern in this classroom had observed this interaction. Asthe reader can imagine, she no longer viewed Nolan as the expertwho had all the answers to classroom management problems. Theincident also provided Nolan with an opportunity to talk with the in-tern about his feelings concerning the encounter with Matilda. Hemodeled his own reflection about why the interaction had gone thatway and how he might have reshaped the outcome. Although noother incident that interns observed was so dramatic, there wereplenty of instances in which Nolan modeled a process of thinkingthrough instructional problems in reference to his own practice orthat of the mentor teacher. Nolan believed that these opportunitieshelped to establish both the importance of reflection as well as themutual vulnerability and sense of humility that are critical compo-nents of reflective supervision. Thus, when the cycles of observationand conferencing began, some important groundwork had been laid.

Stages of Development in Reflective Supervision

The opportunity to work with the interns over the course ofan entire school year resulted in a different sequence of supervisoryevents. In traditional student teaching supervision, supervisory be-havior appeared to be divided into two stages. Given the shortertime frame, university supervisors did not have the luxury of devel-oping readiness gradually. Generally observation and conferencingbegan during the second week of the semester and continuedthroughout the entire experience. During the initial weeks of the se-

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mester, the university supervisor's strategies tended to be moresupervisor-directed. For example, Nolan chose the focus for obser-vations, selected aspects to be discussed during the post-conference,and typically controlled the flow of interaction. He asked questionsthat focused the supervisees on particular aspects of the data, ask-ing them to interpret data and modeling the interpretation processwhen they could not do so. Typically, he ended each conferencewith some written summaries about what was discussed and somegoals to work on for the next observation.

Gradually over the course of a traditional student teaching ex-perience, Nolan changed his supervisory strategy to a more collabo-rative approach. He asked the student teacher to select the focus forobservations (although always retaining the right to add additionaldata that he saw as important). He allowed the post-conferences tobe more free-flowing and allowed the supervisees to direct what wastalked about. Nolan's goal was to eventually enable the studentteachers to become capable of being equal partners in the processof observing and analyzing their teaching practice. Although the goalwas uniform, the timetable was not. Each supervisee developedthese capabilities at an individual pace. Some developed these skillsearly in the semester, whereas others never became capable of play-ing an equal role in the collaborative process.

In a PDS context, the full-year time line and the PDS structurechanged the nature of Nolan's supervisory practice in terms of themovement toward collaborative reflection. As noted previously, moretime was available to build readiness for observation and conferenc-ing before supervisory cycles began because the interns were not ex-pected to be planning and teaching lessons during the early part ofthe year. Once the intern assumed some planning responsibilities,Nolan initiated observation cycles. In the early stages of observation,he still tended to be rather directive and controlling and moved grad-ually to a more collaborative type of supervision in which the interndrove the data collection and conferencing. As Colleen likened herlearning to teach to that of a child's learning, she detailed the processof being supervised by her PDA:

Interns were on really shaky ground. We're not all very confident and don'tall feel very experienced. As an intern, I saw my PDA modeling what Iwould do for children during goal setting. This meant guiding me to pickout everything that I do well-starting off with the positive. I really likedthe way Nolan did this.

As individual needs required, a PDA offered specific feedbackto the intern about teaching practice and building relationships with

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a mentor teacher. Colleen described how "Nolan talked with [her]about varying styles of teaching that allowed [her] to differently in-terpret [her] mentor teacher's classroom behavior." Because PDAsspent consistent time in a classroom, they understood how mentorteachers modeled their understanding of teaching principles. In thisway, a PDA facilitated and redirected an intern's interpretation of ateaching and learning principle. As her PDA followed the clinical su-pervisory principle of "fewness," Colleen expressed her comfort:

By picking one or two things at a time to work on in my practice, I didn'tfeel overwhelmed. My self-esteem is really important. My PDA helped meto recognize what I do well. When we point to one or two aspects to workon, I feel as if I have reachable goals. If there are too many things to workon, there's no way that I can do it.

This process of moving to a more collaborative relationship wasthe focus of Nolan's supervisory practice from October through Feb-ruary. Time for developing this type of supervisory relationship wasmore readily available in the PDS internship than in a traditional stu-dent teaching setting. Consequently, the PDA became more com-fortable with the individualized nature of development and allowedthis process to proceed at its own pace. For example, Colleen wasselecting observational foci in late October, but Mark did not reallybegin to do so until the middle of December. About midway throughthe internship year, Sally gave her insights into the nature and valueof sharing conversations about her teaching:

By sharing with my PDA and mentor teacher our observations after the les-son, or sometimes during the lesson, I realized what children were under-standing or not understanding. Talk enabled me to better understand con-cepts rather than reading them from a triplicate sheet of written feedback.We conversed and shared. I looked over the observation sheet to see whatsense I made of the data. I scribbled questions-sometimes I e-mailed themto Gimbert. Usually the next day we talked about my questions and relatedthinking. I found this very helpful for planning the next lessons.

Kathryn described conversations that she and Gimbert shared in themiddle of a lesson:

Gimbert often worked with me at a center. Sometimes, as I was teaching,I had a question or a concern. I usually phrased it as a question, such as,"What do you think about that, Dr. G?" or "Do you have some idea aboutthat, Dr. G?" or "What do you think about Nick's idea?" This gave me spaceto get my thoughts together and listen to her ideas. She usually respondedwith some suggestions from which I could choose a course of action or aresponse to a child. When Gimbert shared conversations aloud with me, Ithought of other ideas, like co-reflection-in-action!

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In describing the process her PDA followed for the post-con-ferences, Colleen highlighted collaborative conversation based onquestions that Nolan asked her:

Why did you decide to do it this way? Did I think that was developmen-tally appropriate? What did I notice about this part of the lesson? Nolangave me data to help me figure out who was off-task. As we looked at thedata together, he gave me ideas about how to better manage the class forthis particular task. I noticed patterns of children's behavior that I did notsee during the lesson. We brainstormed ways for me to think about pullingspecific children back into the lessons. Our conversation gave me the voiceto identify my management strengths and those areas that I could focus on.

Beginning in February, each intern and mentor teacher beganworking on teacher inquiry projects. The process of teacher inquiryhad a significant impact on both Nolan's supervisory behavior andthe interns' abilities to collaborate as partners. The interns were nowquite eager to specify the particular types of data that Nolan shouldcollect and spent time analyzing the data during conferences and in-dependently as well. The inquiry projects gave the interns motiva-tion and confidence to play a major role in defining the supervisionprocess. The skills developed through the inquiry process enabledthe supervisory process to be much more collaborative in the finalmonths of the school year.

Kathryn's inquiry project focused on her science teaching prac-tice. As she looked for evidence that supported her wonderingsabout how children used the science table in her classroom, Kathrynasked her PDA to collect data. Kathryn generated a chart for Gim-bert to use in collating information about which children visited thescience table. Kathryn instructed her PDA to record the children'snames and snippets of the children's conversation while interactingat the table:

I was interested in finding out how effective the tasks at the science tablewere for probing the children's thinking about sound. I was concerned thatthe children were playing with the objects but not using scientific inquiry.Gimbert and I talked about what children's playing would look and soundlike and what children's learning would look like. After she collected thedata, I looked for patterns across the children's conversations. The nextday, Gimbert again collected data for me to analyze. From the first set ofdata I noticed several similar thoughts from the children about how vibra-tions move through water. Before Gimbert collected the data, my initialconcern was that the children would only play at the science table and notfocus on the results of doing the tasks. As I looked over the children's com-ments, I learned that what I consider to be play is the process a 1st graderuses to engage in scientific inquiry. I realized how my adult thinking wasinterfering with my understanding about how children think and learn.

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A University Supervisors and Interns' Perspectives

Focus on the Support of Children's Learning

PDS interns and the university supervisor recognized each otheras facilitators of children's learning. Research has not offered evi-dence of this reciprocated response in a traditional student teachingcontext. Typically, student teachers have expected supervisors tosupport their learning, not the children's.2 7

The interns identified specific ways that the PDA's knowledgeof individual children in their classrooms supported their efforts inlearning to teach. Colleen described an occasion when she permit-ted a student to hand in a piece of work despite the fact that it didnot meet the expectations she had set. Nolan asked her "why shedid that." Because she knew that Nolan understood the student'slearning style, Colleen explained why on this particular occasion shehad allowed the student, Craig, to do this. Although she set high ex-pectations for all the students, Colleen recognized that Craig "wasnot doing his best work. Craig was totally frustrated." Nolan andColleen brainstormed some ways a teacher can help children whenthey reach a point of giving up on a task. Colleen felt "she could nothave shared such a conversation with a traditional supervisor sincethey do not know the children."

Extending from this example, children recognized the PDA asanother teacher. As Colleen explained:

The children knew Nolan and were comfortable with him. He knew theirnames. When I set a task that required the children to write a creative re-sponse, Nolan would go over to a child he knew would have a trying timewith that task. He encouraged the student. He said, "Now that you havethat down, what do you think you need to put next?" He was modeling forme the types of conversations I needed to have with children.

Colleen recognized that Nolan's relationships with the childrenprompted discussions that helped her make sense of her teachingbehavior. Likewise, Diana felt that most of what she reflected on was"at a deeper level of analysis." She believed this was true becauseshe found that she did not waste writing time describing in detail theparticular incident or the child that was involved in the situation.

Sometimes, I struggled so hard to figure out what it was that a particular childknew. When my PDA knew that child's needs as well, she helped to changeactivities [in a way] that helped that child be successful. My PDA's intimacywith the physical layout of the room, the children, and the relationship withmy mentor teacher facilitated my interpretation of my teaching.

27Kathleen S. Puckett and Tricia McClam, "Qualities of Effective Supervision:The Expectations of Prospective Student Teachers," The Teacher Educator 26(Spring 1991): 2-8.

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When the intern and the PDA were united in their efforts tosupport children's conceptual learning, they felt comfortable sharingconversations about children at unplanned times. For example, onmany occasions interns highlighted times when they talked aboutparticular children partway through a lesson, or when a PDA wasasked to contribute some content knowledge. During a math lesson,Diana asked Gimbert to guide her as she worked with a student ona particular math concept. When a student asked a question duringa lesson on marsupials that neither the mentor teacher nor Sallycould answer, Sally directed the question to Gimbert. In the middleof a class meeting, Kathryn, Kathryn's mentor teacher, and Gimbertadopted various parts in an impromptu role-play to help the childrenunderstand what it is to be a friend.

As the interns struggled to understand children's conceptualknowledge, intern-PDA talk focused on helping the interns under-stand their own content knowledge. On one occasion in Marchwhen Mark was planning a unit on electricity, he and Nolan sharedwhat each considered their definition of energy. Selecting individualchildren in Mark's classroom and discussing how they thought thata particular child would understand energy helped Mark to deviseconcrete examples for his lessons:

I was thinking more of energy in terms of a definition for the unit. Butwhen Nolan pointed out to me that most of my children did not think ofenergy as an abstract term, I reconsidered how else I could help them tounderstand. What would energy look like for a child?

From the university supervisor's perspective, Nolan developeda very different relationship with the children in his role as a PDA.As a supervisor in a traditional student teaching context, Nolan vis-ited each classroom approximately 12 times in a 15-week semester.His role in the classroom was as an observer, watching the studentteacher teach. After quickly acknowledging children when they triedto get his attention, Nolan generally tried to ignore their waves,smiles, and whispers. His behavior did not signify a lack of care andrespect for the children, but he did not want to disturb the class-room, and also he needed to focus on his observation task.

In the PDS context, Nolan had the luxury of spending a greatdeal of time in each classroom over the course of the year. As a re-sult, the children knew Nolan, and he knew them. Nolan called eachof them by name, even outside the classroom. Once, when a men-tor teacher was absent, Ellen, one of her 3rd grade students, ap-proached Nolan with a birthday card that the children had made inanticipation of the mentor's upcoming birthday. Ellen asked Nolan ifhe would sign the card along with the rest of the class. In February,

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as Nolan walked into a 5th grade room, Kyle yelled, "Dr. Nolan,"and rushed over to greet him. When Nolan arrived in Karen's class(Colleen's mentor teacher) during an indoor recess, three childrencame up to him and asked if he could pick out their individual artproject from the display of all the students' work. Nolan pinpointedone student's drawing exactly and narrowed the choices down totwo possibilities for the other two students. These three incidentssymbolized for Nolan the degree to which the children knew himand saw him as a part of the classroom, and vice versa.

Knowing the children well affected Nolan's behavior as a super-visor. He has long advocated that the impact of teaching behavior onlearners should be a central focus of the reflective supervisionprocess.28 As a result, he endeavored to focus student teachers' think-ing on the consequences of their practice for children. As a studentteaching supervisor, he often asked student teachers to analyze theactual or potential impact of their behavior as shown by observa-tional data. The questions usually were about children in general.Within the PDS context, Nolan's questions tended to be quite differ-ent. He was now familiar with all the children he was observing. Hehad some sense of their general personality characteristics, theirlearning styles, and their strengths and weaknesses as learners. Thus,he was able to focus the interns' attention not only on the impact oftheir behavior on children in general but also very specifically on in-dividual children. For example, Nolan asked Colleen, "I know thatRodger, a 3rd grader, has trouble with motor skills. When you wereplanning the lesson, what modifications did you think about makingso that he would be able to make the appropriate size fraction bars?"Nolan was more aware of potential trouble spots in learning activi-ties for various learners and asked questions, sometimes in advanceof lessons, that helped an intern think through adaptations thatneeded to be made. In other words, Nolan's questions changed from"How do you think the children did with this activity?" to "How doyou think [Rodger, Sukli, Kristoff, and Tamara-names of specificchildren] did with this activity?" In this rephrasing, each child repre-sented a different type of learner who was likely to experience thelesson quite differently. Thus, Nolan provided more feedback andscaffolding to help interns deal more productively with individual dif-ferences and to help them come to grips with the complexities of theclassroom. His previous focus on consequences for the children wasaugmented by a focus on the consequences for the individual child.

28James F. Nolan and Tonya Huber, "Nurturing the Reflective PractitionerThrough Instructional Supervision: A Review of the Literature," Journal oJ Curricu-lum and Supervision 4 (Winter 1989): 126-145.

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Belinda Gimbert and James F Nolan Jr.

Assist Versus Assess

One of the dilemmas inherent in supervising preservice teach-ers is that of separating the functions of assisting and assessing.From the interns'perspectives, the supportive relationships that werecultivated in the yearlong internship somewhat dispelled their con-cerns with assessing and focused each intern's supervisory needs onassisting. As she described her PDA's role in the classroom, Dianaalluded to the assisting relationship that Gimbert cultivated:

It was not a relationship where she observed me, gave feedback, and left.When Gimbert came into the classroom, I knew that she was there to sup-port what we were doing. For example, if I was teaching a math lesson,she did the lesson with the children. She helped the children and added toconversations if my mentor and I were coteaching. During math lessons, ifthere was a step I missed that would help the children understand a con-cept, she was there to cue me. It was not a relationship in which she wasthe person who gave me an A or a B or a C. Gimbert was there to help melearn to teach. I had to figure out what I needed to do and whether thisworked for the children or not.

From the university supervisor's perspective, a critical yet some-what distasteful part of traditional student teaching supervision wasthe university's requirement to assign performance grades at the endof the semester. Throughout the semester Nolan did everything hecould think of to keep the focus of the process on formatively eval-uating the student teacher's performance. Goal setting was used asa means to concentrate on continuous improvement and to keep thefocus away from the final grade. Nolan did this to try to protect thestudent teachers from the enormous pressure they felt to earn an Ain student teaching. Despite his emphasis on continuous improve-ment, the goal of earning an A by the end of the semester ensuredthat the student teachers always had one eye on the final grade.Nolan believed that the student teachers often saw him as judge andjury from the beginning of the semester to the end.

Although grades were equally important to the interns thatNolan supervised in the PDS context, the extended time period andtheir feelings of ongoing support seemed to deflect the enormouspressure of grading to some degree. Rather than students seeing himas judge and jury, Nolan believed that they saw him as a vehicle forhelping them to reach those high standards of an A grade. This dif-ference in perspective stemmed in part from the fact that Nolanbegan observing them early in the fall during their first teaching ex-periences. At that point, the interns did not feel capable of beingvery impressive. They simply wanted to live to teach another dayand not perform too badly. They, the mentor, and Nolan looked at

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them as neophytes who were beginning to learn how to teach. Incontrast, the traditional student teaching situation sometimes seemedto be viewed as a prolonged test in which the student teachers weresupposed to demonstrate expertly all those capabilities that they hadpreviously acquired.

Because the internship offered extended time for interns to de-velop individually, the supervision process was not focused on howwell the interns met performance standards until much later in theprocess. The field experience in the fall was graded on a pass/failbasis. It was the end of January before the PDA discussed perfor-mance standards for an A in intern teaching, and by that time, a re-lationship of trust and support between intern, PDA, and mentorteacher was well established. Until that point in the year, goal set-ting was a mechanism for talking about continuous improvementand self-analysis. Beyond February, Nolan used goals as foci for con-tinuous improvement as well as guides for where the intern was po-sitioned in relation to a final grade. In a conventional student teach-ing setting, student teachers seemed to be focused exclusively onmaking the grade.

Individualized Nature of Learning to Teach

From the university supervisor's perspective, a most startling ben-efit for the teacher candidates and the PDAs was the "discovery" ofthe individualized nature of learning to be a teacher. An underlyingprinciple that supported supervision in this particular PDS contextwas the belief that the interns needed to be allowed to progress attheir own individual pace. Although PDS interns were expected tobe capable of carrying a full teaching load by the end of the year,PDAs anticipated that interns would develop readiness for handlinga full teaching load at different times. In concert with this belief, co-ordinators of this program placed a mentor teacher and a PDA in therole of helping the intern construct an Individualized Intern Plan(IIP). In developing the IIP, the mentor, the intern, and the PDA metregularly to take stock of where the intern was and mapped out aseries of tasks that moved the intern forward at an appropriate pace.The result of the IIP process was that interns assumed responsibili-ties at very different rates. For example, Mark taught a small groupof math students every day from October until April, when he as-sumed responsibility for the entire class. He did not begin teachinglanguage arts until late February. Colleen, on the other hand, taughtlanguage arts from November and did not begin teaching math untilMarch. Some mentors and interns decided to proceed subject bysubject, with the intern gradually assuming responsibility for more

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subjects. Other intern-mentor pairs worked by units, with the internpicking up responsibilities for one unit in a particular subject, thengiving responsibility back to the mentor for the next unit, and pick-ing up the responsibility again for the following unit.29

An outcome of the IIP process for the university supervisor wasthe opportunity to watch as the different interns proceeded at dif-ferent rates of development. As a traditional student teaching super-visor, Nolan did not have the luxury of watching development pro-ceed at an appropriate pace. His attempts to help students adhere tothe scheduled expectations for the student teaching semester oftenresembled the behavior of a classroom teacher who feels compelledto push students forward in order to experience the set curriculum.In pushing student development to conform to a uniform pace, in-dividual differences tend to be ignored or seen as something to beovercome. In his defense, Nolan believed that the nature of a tradi-tional student teaching experience blinded him to some degree tothe reality of the individual process of learning to teach. In the threedifferent universities in which Nolan previously supervised studentteachers, the structure of the experience was remarkably similar. Thestudent teachers were expected to spend approximately the firstweek observing their cooperating teacher and other teachers. Some-time during the second week, the student teacher was expected tobegin teaching one class section or one subject. If all proceeded ac-cording to plan, the student teacher picked up another class or sub-ject about a week and a half later. This pattern of continually in-creasing the student teacher's load continued until there were aboutfive or six weeks left in the semester. At this point, the studentteacher was expected to be teaching the full class load that the men-tor teacher carried, including extra duties. This expected pattern forassuming responsibilities was generally well known and adhered toquite rigidly. If the student teacher had special circumstances, thenindividual alterations could be made. However, in the absence ofspecial circumstances, any student teacher who was not able to keepup this pace became suspect. The cooperating teacher and the su-pervisor worried about whether the student teacher was going tomake it or not. In the PSU-SCASD professional development schoolcontext with its IIP structure, Nolan found a process that modeledthe developmental approach that he advocated for children. As a re-sult, Nolan developed a much clearer understanding of the individ-ualized nature of the process of learning to teach.

19Diane Y. Silva, "Telling Their Stories: Mentor Teachers' Ways of Being andKnowing in a Professional Development School" (doctoral dissertation, The Penn-sylvania State University, 1999).

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The individual nature of learning to teach has consequences fora university supervisor's behavior. As interns identified their super-visory needs, the PDA spent varying amounts of time with each in-tern, as well as with different aspects of the supervision cycle. Forexample, midway through her internship, Diana needed time to talkabout concerns she was experiencing with planning lessons. At thispoint, she felt comfortable getting feedback from and co-reflectingwith her mentor teacher, but she needed further support for theplanning phase of a lesson. Pre-conferences with her PDA requiredmore time.

When they recognized that learning to teach meant individualprogress, interns realized the support that a team of PDAs offered.Focusing on the strengths of a particular PDA, interns requested thatvarious PDAs support their learning about teaching and how toteach. For example, interns recognized Nolan as offering expertisein issues of classroom management, whereas other PDAs offeredspecial expertise in other areas of instruction. The interns noted theircomfort in inviting any one of these PDAs into their classrooms tocollect data and to offer feedback about content-related issues orpedagogical practice.

DISCUSSION

Despite the lack of clarity regarding the roles, responsibilities,and rituals of the members of the student teaching triad, the schol-arly literature on student teaching supports the widely acceptedpremise that the cooperating teacher has greater influence on thestudent teacher in the traditional context of student teaching thandoes the university supervisor.30 Furthermore, the nebulous impactof the university supervisor on preservice teacher development sug-gested by earlier research has called for further in-depth analysis ofthis role.31 Consequently, this article has explored the influence ofthe PDS context on supervisory practice from the perspectives of theprofessional development associate and the PDS interns. This studyidentified significant aspects of a PDA's supervisory practices in thecontext of a particular school-university partnership. In relation to

30See, for example, Deanne Boydell, "Issues in Teaching Practice SupervisionResearch: A Review of the Literature," Teaching and Teacher Education 2 (October1986): 115-125; Edith Guyton and D. John McIntyre, "Student Teaching and SchoolExperience," in Handbook of Research in Teacher Education, ed. W. Robert Hous-ton (New York: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 514-534.

"1Kim K. Metcalf, "The Supervision of Student Teaching: A Review of Re-search," The TeacherEducator26 (Spring 1991): 27-42.

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readiness and relationship building, support for the stages of super-vision, focus on individual children, and goal setting, data pointedsharply to a heightened role for the PDA in the supervisory process.

Inherent in the PDA's daily work were tensions and conflictsthat emerged as supervisory relationships deepened. For example,as interns began to understand and to value conversations aboutlearning to teach, they constantly requested that a PDA observethem. Although each PDA was responsible for direct observation ofonly five or six interns, university responsibilities on campus meantthat a particular PDA could not be present in a building every schoolday. Interns, although cognizant of the PDA's other responsibilities,still had high expectations for PDAs, as Diana expressed:

I knew my PDA had to be at the university some time, but I was impatientwhen she was not there to see what happened during a lesson. I wantedto share with her what was and wasn't working. My mentor teacher and Icotaught much of the time. When our PDA was there, she taught a centeras well. Sometimes I watched her teach. Other times, I observed my men-tor. We never had enough time to talk. I was envious when I knew myPDA was in the building and she was not in my room.

As interns aggressively demanded that their supervisors spendmore time in classrooms, the PDAs struggled to balance supervisoryresponsibilities in the partnership and other university commitmentsoutside the boundaries of the PDS work. Also, expansion of the num-ber of interns in the PDS cohort required additional university facultyand graduate students with appropriate supervisory skills. Recruitingand supporting university and school-based teacher educators whohave such skills was and remains a significant challenge. Institutionscontemplating the development of PDS partnerships must confrontthe question of how to support university faculty members, graduatestudents, and classroom teachers as they develop contextually ap-propriate supervisory understandings and skills.

Extending supervisory relationships led to newer tensions. Forexample, Colleen desired a relationship with her PDA that allowedher to talk freely about how she was feeling and the aspects of herlearning that frustrated her. She had not experienced building sucha relationship with any of her professors in her undergraduatecourses. Initially, she believed that Nolan (her PDA) was "a littletaken aback by [her] complaining when [she] thought things werenot working." Colleen explained to Nolan that she felt that this wasa sign of developing trust in their relationship. As their relationshipstrengthened, Colleen continued to talk with him about dilemmasthat bothered her. "He was very approachable and listened to what

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I had to say. He really sought out our opinions. My PDA created arelationship with me where I am in a position to feel I can talk tohim about exactly what's on my mind."

Although Nolan supported both the intern's and the mentorteacher's professional development, he respected the position of anintern as a guest in a mentor teacher's classroom. Initially, internswere highly critical of some teachers' activities and labeled classroompractices as "right" or "wrong." PDAs mediated interns' thoughtsabout classroom teachers' beliefs and practices and their under-standing of children. They suggested interns consider alternative ex-planations for why the mentor might be approaching a particular les-son or child in a way that was not attractive to the intern on thesurface level. Guiding the interns to acknowledge the strengths ofdiffering teacher identities created tensions for the interns initially. Asthe interns became more accustomed to entertaining alternative ex-planations for teaching practices, they became more comfortable em-bracing the complexities of teaching. Open discussions during su-pervisory post-conferences and weekly meeting times with internsoffered opportunities for understanding and negotiating these differ-ences. For example, one intern, Caran, concluded, "Although that isnot a practice I would use in my classroom, I can live with this nowthat I understand why."

In individual cases, tensions developed when an intern, a men-tor teacher, and a PDA "lived together" for a whole year. The ex-tended time made it very difficult for members continually to ignoreany irritating personality behaviors. At times, triad members struggledto find a level of comfort that supported and resolved these conflicts.How can relationships be supported when a personality clash andmiscommunication develop in the supervisory triad? For example,early in the internship, a mentor teacher and an intern struggled tobuild a relationship. Nolan facilitated triad discussions that definedthe intern's role in the classroom and goals for learning to teach. Thisaction created spaces for further informal conversations that helpedthis mentor teacher and intern mutually respect each other's beliefsabout teaching and learning. At another time when his relationshipwith his mentor teacher was at a low point, Mark's PDA modeled forhim a problem-solving strategy that helped Mark explain his feelings.A misinterpretation of a request from his mentor teacher led Markto be embarrassed by an off-hand remark that his mentor teachermade in front of the children. At Nolan's suggestion, Mark used an"I-message" to explain his feelings to his mentor. This communica-tion strategy gave Mark new understandings and skills for nurturingtheir intern-mentor teacher relationship. As he considered other ways

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to negotiate with more experienced colleagues, Mark's trusting rela-tionship with his PDA encouraged and supported his confidence.

CONCLUSION

When a school community and a college of education form apartnership, the emerging culture yields different understandings,problems, and questions. This research constituted an initial step inthe process of understanding and assessing university supervision ina PDS community. From a university supervisor's and interns' per-spectives, supervisory practice in the context of this study's PDS was"lived" quite differently than has been previously described in su-pervision research in traditional student teacher settings. From theresearchers' perspectives, the effectiveness of the university super-visor has increased in this PDS setting, but this hypothesis requiresexploration.

Given the number of schools and teacher preparation programsthat embrace the work of school-university partnerships, researchersare positioned to explore the impact of supervisory practices inthese contexts. Studies should be undertaken that address how su-pervision in the context of a partnership supports learning outcomesfor children, inservice teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher edu-cators.32 Teacher educators, for example, might conduct self-studiesthat examine the impact of supervisory practices on the learning andteaching of children, teacher candidates, veteran teachers, and uni-versity faculty who work together in a PDS context. Such researchstudies offer the potential for the development of understandingsconcerning how supervisory practices can be replicated in otherschool-university partnerships as a means to enhance students' leam-ing outcomes.

BELINDA GIMBERT is Assistant Professor of Education at The PennsylvaniaState University; 144 Chambers Building, University Park, PA 16802; phone: (757)489-5368; e-mail: [email protected]. JAMES F. NOLAN JR. is Professor of Educationand Co-coordinator of the Professional Development School partnership at ThePennsylvania State University; 144 Chambers Building, University Park, PA 16802;phone: (814) 865-2243; e-mail: [email protected].

32Nancy Dana. Diana Silva, Belinda Gimbert, Jim Nolan, Carla Zembal-Saul,Ron Tzur, Lucy Mule, and Lynne Sanders, "Developing New Understandings of PDSWork: Better Problems, Better Questions," Action in TeacherEducation 22 (Winter2001): 15-25.

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TITLE: The Influence of the Professional Development SchoolContext on Supervisory Practice: A UniversitySupervisor’s and Interns’ Perspectives

SOURCE: J Curric Superv 18 no4 Summ 2003WN: 0319602453005

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THE INFLUENCE OF THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SCHOOL CONTEXT ON SUPERVISORY PRACTICE: A UNIVERSITY...

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