Problematising Teaching Through a ‘Critical’ Approach to Clinical Supervision

In this article I present four interrelated arguments: first, that there is a general case to be made for having teachers themselves (rather than administrators) view their teaching problematically and as a form of inquiry, as distinct from a form of prescription; second, that a compelling case can be made for the restoration of an appropriate version of clinical supervision capable of problematising teaching, and which is markedly different from that touted by Hunter (1980a; 1985) and her supporters; third, that such a version of clinical supervision might appropriately be located within what might broadly be conceived of as a perspective, as distinct from the instrumental manner in which it is generally portrayed and enacted today; and finally, that it is possible to provide some practical pointers on how a reconceptualised clinical supervision might be useful as a context within which to begin the process of problematising teaching. At the outset it should be said that since the idea of clinical supervision began at Harvard University in the 1960s, it has had a chequered history and has taken on a variety of meanings and interpretations, some of them not particularly flattering to teachers. If we look carefully at the history of clinical supervision we find that current usage has not only lost the intent of the original model, but generated an overly narrow and technical view of its implementation. What I intend to do here is to recapture something of the tradition commenced by Goldhammer (1969) and build upon it, by proposing a critical view of clinical supervision, where I take critical to mean more than being negative, carping, or disapproving. What I have in mind is more aligned with Apple's (1975) view of as being a radical process of reexamining our current positions and interrogating the relationships that exist, and how these connect with the social structures from which they emerge (p. 127). Put directly, I shall argue that what started out as a process, a set of