Toward, a “Critical Consciousness” in the Instructional Supervision of Experienced Teachers

The thesis of this article is that the educational community has been too reliant in the past on hierarchical and sanction-ridden modes of of teachers (and teaching) as the path to quality learning experiences for children. The integrating argument here is that if teachers are to improve their pedagogy then there should be less not more technical control of teaching. Rather than seeking to guarantee effective teaching by recourse to the business management canons of accountability, inspection, and quality control, the line pursued here is that teachers might benefit instead from processes that enable them to gain insights acquire understandings, and exercise a measure of empowerment over their own teaching. What this article attempts at the outset, from a largely historical perspective, is to question the values of business management as enshrined in the practices of instructional supervision and to question whether these are necessarily the most desirable for pedagogical enlightenment. By way of example, past practices in instructional supervision are considered in terms of the attempt to envelop teachers in forms of bureaucratic and psychological control. As Blumberg (1980) has noted, teachers have been involved in a long, private cold war with supervisors, with much of the action effectively occurring behind the classroom door.