Collegiality and Teachers' Work in the Context of Peer Supervision

This article describes a study of peer supervision framed within the context of a formal school board-sponsored program called Supervision for Growth (S4G). In the study I examined the collegial interactions of 4 teachers and their partners in 1 Canadian school and explored the effects of collegiality on the teachers' work. Data for the study consisted of field notes and interview transcripts collected over a 5-month period of participant observation. Results showed that the quality and quantity of collegial interactions between the 4 teachers and their partners covered a broad spectrum-from frequent and productive to infrequent and superficial. The kind of formality encouraged by the coaching cycle in S4G was eschewed by all teachers in the study. Teachers did not see conferences, observations, and record keeping as essential to their daily practice. The principal's role in the process was generally one of warm encouragement and helpfulness, rather than intervention. Overall, teachers were more receptive to the general idea of helping than to formal notions of coaching or supervision.