The Craft Of Teacher Supervision Summary

Doctors Joseph and Jo Blase, a husband and wife duo who both teach educational leadership at the University of Georgia, author the book Handbook of Instructional Leadership: How Really Good Principals Promote Teaching and Learning; thereby, adding to an already expansive collection of scholarly articles coauthored by them on the subject of educational leadership. In this book, the Blases accomplish two tasks: outlining how principals should apply instructional leadership skills while performing their job, and how principals should maintain positive relationships with their teachers while still effectively leading. To accomplish these tasks, the authors divide up the book into brief chapters that each deal with either an attribute of instructional

In fact, this chapter appears out of place in the organizational structure of the book because of its reference to material on teacher-principal relationships. For example, the Blases cite the research and postulates of other scholars to support the Part II concept that principals should act cooperatively instead of in a controlling manner with teachers in this chapter. Therefore, organizationally speaking, “The Craft of Teacher Supervision,” functions better as another preface to the book than an introduction to Part I. Despite the nonsensical placement of “The Craft of Teacher Supervision” in the book, the chapter itself contains supportive and scholarly evidence and information. To support the validity of their research provided subsequently in the book, the Blases state that their body of research includes data from a sampling of “more than 800 teachers working in public elementary, middle, and high schools in the Southeastern, Midwestern, and Northwestern United States” (6). Accordingly, the large quantity of teachers surveyed as well as the variety in their geographic and workplace locations supports the notion that the Blases’ research represents the general opinion of teachers in America. Similar to “The Craft of Teacher

An example of this well-crafted use of secondary sources includes research compiled to analyze categories of reflexive behavior. In their emphasis of reflexive behavior amongst principals, the Blases construct a chart to show how research from fellow scholars over the recent years addresses the themes associated with reflexive behavior, and they show how their data fills in the gaps of the other scholars’ research. Because the Blases effectively organize the research of ten other scholars into a chart, Figure 4.1, that contains a checklist of categories that compose reflexive behavior research, they expose the research accomplishments and shortfalls of each publication (90-91). While the compilation of all the publications leaves no category of reflexive research untouched, no single publication contains all seven attributes that the Blases find important in reflexive studies. To show that their own research fills in the gaps in research by other scholars, the Blases present figure 7.2, which shows the seven categories of reflexive thought, and they list quotes from their research next to each of these categories to prove that their own research thoroughly explains reflexive thought (93). To prove that an unbiased model analyzes their research, the authors utilize the seven-categorical system developed by Eastern Michigan