Teachers as collaborative learners in clinical supervision: a state‐of‐the‐art review¹

While there is an abundance of rhetoric in the educational literature that exhorts teachers to be more critical and reflective of their teaching, that same body of literature is desperately short on practical advice. This paper specifically addresses a tried and tested process of peer or colleague consultation as a way of enabling teachers to develop the kind of collaborative relationship conducive to interclass visitation, observation and discussion. Accordingly, ‘clinical supervision’ is proposed as a framework within which teachers can begin the difficult task of uncovering the layers of meaning in their teaching, by engaging in ‘frequent, continuous and increasingly concrete and precise talk about their teaching.’ 1Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Research Association, Montreal, Canada, April 1983.