The Role of Supervisors

The man (woman) who says

he
“knows” is already dead.
But the man (woman) who
thinks
“I don’t know,”
who is discovering, finding
out,
who is not seeking an end,
not
thinking in terms of arriving
or
becoming – such a man is
living
and that living is truth.
Give a man a fish and he eats
for a day.
Teach him how to fish and he
eats for a lifetime.
 Our Objectives
• Develop and strengthen
relations with colleagues
by coordinating and
interacting with them
regarding tasks, activities,
and educational projects
to have a positive impact
on the whole educational
process and its various
• Exchange expertise among
all the educational zones.
• Reflect on our efficiency
and effectiveness as staff
members.
• Launch a co-operation
project for the
development of staff
 Content
• Introduction (open
discussion on the topic)
• Self evaluation task sheet.
• Analysis of the
questionnaire and its
findings.
• Defining staff training and
development.
• Staff-training practice and
procedures.
• Forms of staff
development.
• The role of staff members.
• Conclusion &
Recommendations
• Tasks
Are you satisfied with
your work as a staff
member?
How about your
academic
effectiveness?
What academic
models do you follow?
 Please, answer these
questions to evaluate
your work.
• 1- Did you follow a specific
work-plan during the
academic year?
• 2- Have you achieved what
you planned for?
• 3- Did you introduce field
topics for minor members?
• 4- Did you acquaint yourself with
recent trends within the domain
of your job?
• 5- Did you contribute in training
new staff members?
• 6- Did you motivate your
students to read?
• 7- Do you encourage group
projects?
• 8- Did you participate or
• 9- Do you encourage
individual initiatives and/or
experimenting new teaching
strategies?
• 10- Do you notice the slightest
improvement in your
performance as a result of
your instructive visits?
• 11- Are you resourceful
enough to convince others?
• 12- Are you committed and
“A better-informed
staff member will
become a better
one.”
Richard Rosner & Rod Bolitho.

How far do you

agree?
“Experience alone is
insufficient for
professional growth;
experience coupled with
reflection is a much more
powerful impetus for
development.”
Leo Bartlett

What do you think?

 The Questionnaire

• It aimed at knowing how

much staff members are
aware of their
development, what they
need and what they are
prepared to do.
 Yes No Partl
y

1- Are you satisfied with your effectiveness as a staff member? 72% 0% 28%

2- Has your teaching practice improved since you were first appointed? 96% 0% 4%

3- Have you had enough training? 54% 16% 30%

4- Are you a regular reader of an educational periodic or magazine (TESOL / FORUM / 28% 40% 32%
READERS’ DIGEST / ELT Journals…etc )?

5- Do you attend conferences, workshops, or any other professional development events? 74% 8% 18%

6- Do you exchange ideas with your colleagues? 90% 2% 8%

7- Are you ready to invest time and money in your professional development? 52% 16% 32%

8- Do you need a language improvement course? 36% 36% 28%

9- Do you need further qualifications? 44% 32% 24%

10- Do you need a methodology course? 38% 44% 18%

11- Do you need time to reflect on your teaching? 56% 18% 26%

12- Do you benefit from your teachings? 76% 8% 16%

13- Do you think that keeping a personal professional-diary is of interest and value to you? 66% 6% 28%

14- Do you seriously care about your own development? 96% 0% 4%

15- Do you agree that every staff member has to regularly update his / her knowledge to 98% 0% 2%
perform the job more effectively?
 The findings

• Most staff members care

about their professional
growth, and agree that
reflection on their teaching is
very important. Besides, they
are ready to invest time and
money in their development.
• Most staff members have
improved their teaching
practice. They exchange
ideas with their colleagues.

• The majority of them benefit

from their visits to lectures.
 Who is responsible?
• The Staff member
• Head of department
• Dean
• Vice dean
• Ministry
No one mentioned the role of
the university as an
educational entity.
 Staff members have
reported they need the
following to teach better
• To be motivated
• Training in language &
methodology locally and
abroad
• Workshops / field lessons /
conferences
• Respect, consideration,
appreciation and
• Exchanging academic
experience
• Less administrative work and
less teaching periods
• Self-confidence
• Financial support
• References
 Comments
• It was a self-revelation.
• The staff member has
become a culmination of
worries, stress and blame.
• The questionnaire boosted
my perspective .
 Professional Development

Staff member Training and

Development have often been
discussed largely in isolation or
as distinct and sometimes
contrasting dichotomies.
 Staff member Training
places’ authority in the
hands of an external source,
while Staff member
Development empowers the
individual Staff member and
stresses his/her “whole
person” rather than the staff
member as a technician.
staff member Education

Staff member Education

as a process of growth
would embody both
Training and
Development.
Freeman (1989) suggests that
“within the general process of
staff member education, a valid
operational distinction can be
made between two functions…
Training and Development.
Thus, the term Education is
perceived as the super-
ordinate, whereas staff member
Training and staff member
 Training Practice

Staff member-training

practices can be divided into

those that are experiential

and those that are awareness

raising. (Rod
Experiential practices
involve the trainee in actual
teaching. This can occur
through “teaching practice”,
where the trainees are
required to teach actual
students in real classrooms, or
it can occur in “simulated”
practice, as when the trainees
engage in peer training or
Awareness-raising practices are
intended to develop the trainee’s
conscious understanding of the
principles underlying teaching
and/or the practical techniques
that staff members can use in
different kinds of lessons.
It is worth mentioning here that
the two forms of training practice
can be combined in a single
activity.
 staff member-Training
Procedures
• Lectures: They can be used to provide
straight “input”.
• Group/pair discussion: The trainees
work in groups or pairs using activity
sheets.
• Workshops: The trainees work
individually or in groups to prepare
something, such as lesson materials,
teaching aids, or lesson plans.
• Demonstrations: The trainer
demonstrates a particular technique,
• Elicitation: The trainer works with
the trainees and tries to draw out
opinions on specific teach-training
points using a question-and-answer
technique.
• Plenary discussion: There is
general discussion of specific issues
with all the trainees together.
• Panel discussion: The trainee can
make use of panel discussion in
several different ways. One way is to
invite a number of trainees to form a
panel. The other trainees then
prepare a number of questions on
 TASK 1
What training procedure
would you consider
appropriate to use during
your school visits? Consider
“Hamer’s six criteria for
evaluating a
Communicative purpose
communicative
classroom activity” as a topic.
Communicative desire
Content not form
Variety of language
No staff member intervention
No materials control
 staff member
Development
The paths to professionalism are as
diverse as the profession itself. It
may help to think of professionalism
as a continuum with "just a job" at
one end and "professionalism" at the
other. Our goal is to continually
move toward the professionalism
side of the spectrum.

How can we do that?

• Stay current with trends by
participating in member communities;
subscribing to international
organizations.
• Attend conferences, workshops, or
any other professional development
events.
• Share your ideas with your colleagues,
and look for opportunities to learn
from your colleagues' ideas.
• Invest personal time and money as
needed.
• Focus on your responsibility to your
students.
• staff member Development is in
many ways parallel to the Learner
Independence movement. Just as
learners appear to make better
progress when they make their own
learning decisions, the chances are
that staff members too will achieve
better personal and professional
growth when they take on personal
responsibility for their own
development.

Some of the possible procedures

 Reflection
• Reflection, as evidence from staff
member Education literature, means
different things to different authors .
Moon (1994) defines reflection as
being

• “deliberately thoughtful and self-

questioning about one's own actions,
experience or attitudes”.
• Reflective teaching is
therefore a means of
professional development
which begins in our
classroom.

• The first step is to gather

information about what
happens in the class. Here
are some different ways of
 • staff member diary

• This is the easiest way to begin a

process of reflection since it is
purely personal. After each lesson
you write in a notebook about
what happened. You may also
describe your own reactions and
feelings and those you observed on
the part of the students. You are
likely to begin to pose questions
about what you have observed.
Diary writing does require a
certain discipline in taking the
  Peer observation

Invite a colleague to come into
your class to collect information
about your lesson. This may be
with a simple observation task or
through note taking. This will
relate back to the area you have
identified to reflect upon. For
example, you might ask your
colleague to focus on which
students contribute most in the
lesson, what different patterns of
interaction occur or how you
 • Recording lessons

• Video or audio recordings of lessons

can provide very useful information
for reflection. You may do things in
class you are not aware of or there
may be things happening in the class
that as the staff member you do not
normally see.
– Audio recordings can be useful
for considering aspects of staff
member talk.
• How much do you talk?
• What about?
• Are instructions and
explanations clear?
• How much time do you
allocate to student talk?
• How do you respond to student
talk?
– Video recordings can be useful in
showing you aspects of your own
behaviour.
• Where do you stand?
• Who do you speak to?
• How do you come across to the
students?
  Student feedback

 You can also ask your students what

they think about what goes on in the
classroom. Their opinions and
perceptions can add a different and
valuable perspective. This can be
done with simple questionnaires or
learning diaries for example.
 • What to do next?

Once you have some

information recorded about
what goes on in your
classroom, what do you do?
  Think

 You may have noticed patterns

occurring in your teaching
through your observation.
 You may also have noticed
things that you were previously
unaware of.
 You may have been surprised by
some of your students' feedback.
 You may already have ideas for
changes to implement.
 • Talk

• Just by talking about what

you have discovered - to a
supportive colleague or even
a friend - you may be able to
come up with some ideas for
how to do things differently.
– If you have colleagues who also
wish to develop their teaching
using reflection as a tool, you can
meet to discuss issues. Discussion
can be based around scenarios from
your own classes.
– Using a list of statements about
teaching beliefs (for example,
pairwork is a valuable activity in
the language class or lexis is more
important than grammar) you can
discuss which ones you agree or
disagree with, and which ones are
  Read

You may decide that you need to find
out more about a certain area. There
are plenty of websites for staff
members of English now where you
can find useful teaching ideas, or
more academic articles. There are
also magazines for staff members
where you can find articles on a
wide range of topics. Or if you have
access to a library or bookshop,
there are plenty of books for English
  Ask

Pose questions to websites or
magazines to get ideas from other
staff members. Or if you have a local
staff members' association or other
opportunities for in-service training,
ask for a session on an area that
interests you.
• Reflective teaching is one step
towards professional development.

• Although it may seem to be a

personal initiative, staff members
may be encouraged to have a try.
 Professional
Growth

Teacher Teacher
Training Development

Awareness Peer
Experiential Reflection Diary
raising observation

Lectures Demonstrations

Group, pair
Workshops
discussions

Discussions
Action order in reflection
Ask Do

Read Think

Talk
 Here are six examples of staff
member development options.
Which one(s) would you
encourage?

1. Staff member A finds a good practical

idea in an ELT journal. He decides, with
a colleague, to try it out for a month and
to discuss progress once a week.

2. Ten staff members from School X decide

to meet once a month to discuss a book
or article all have agreed to read.

3. Eight staff members from School Y

decide to meet once a month to talk over
problems individuals have encountered.
4. staff member B decides to take a
course on a non ELT subject, which
she thinks may give new insights for
her teaching. (For example, a course
on counseling skills, photography,
computer and so on.)

5. staff member C decides to improve

his qualifications. He enrolls on a post
graduate TEFL course.

6. staff members D and E decide to

implement ideas they have on learner
independence. They set up a small
• Read the following list of possible “benefits” or
“consequences” of professional development. Please
rank them from 1 to 8 in their order of importance
to you, with 1 being the most important and 8 being
the least important.

- Expansion of duties (new responsibilities)

- Improvement of students’ learning
- Intrinsic rewards (personal satisfaction,
happiness, feeling of accomplishment)
- Job retention (maintaining or increasing your
employment)
- Professional development (improving your
knowledge and skills)
- Promotion (improving your position )
- Recognition through awards or certificates
The Role of Supervisors
The supervisor’s tasks are : ‘ varied,
systematic, orderly, and
characterized by variety of
techniques. The educational
supervisor’s tasks can be carried out
through:
- staff meetings
- seminars
- class visits
- democratic debates
- objective discussions
- guidance
- modelling
- role-play
- micro and peer teaching
- training and refreshing workshops.
- (A Guide to Educational Supervision ,
2002-2003)
 Reasons for Professional
Development
• Language teaching is faced with
accountability issues that call for
improved staff member development
as a means of improving student
learning. This renewed interest in the
improvement of teaching seems to
stem from the long overdue
realization that, given good teaching,
chances are learners will learn more.
• Our aim is to provide an overview of
effective approaches to staff
members’ professional development.
These approaches have been
selected for their congruence with
best practices in the field and for
their effectiveness in bringing about
quality staff member learning over
time. In presenting the various
approaches, an effort has been made
to contextualize them within two
important success indicators for
staff member development
programs: their similarity to the
principles of adult learning and their
 • The nature of adult learners
• To be effective, an adult education
program should comply with certain
principles of adult learning, which are:
• • Voluntary participation
• • Mutual respect
• • Collaboration
• • Action and reflection
• • Organizational setting
• • Choice and change
• • Motivation
• • Self-direction
• Another variable to be taken into
consideration when planning a
differentiated approach to professional
development programs is that staff
members seem to evolve over cycles
during their careers. Many
researchers have focused on the life
cycles of staff members (Huberman
1989;Fessler and Christensen 1992;
Furlong and Maynard 1995). The
stages staff members go through in
developing as professionals are as
follows:
• Phase 1: Exploration and
stabilization
• Phase 2: Commitment
• Phase 3: Diversification and
crisis
• Phase 4: Serenity or distancing
• Phase 5: Conservatism or regret
 Options for Professional
Development
• Conference Plan
• Peer Coaching
• Study Groups
• Dialogue Journals
• Professional Development
Portfolios
• Mentoring
• Participatory Practitioner
Research
 staff member
ASSESSMENT
• staff member assessment is another
alternative way to staff members’
professional development. Besides
providing the occasional snapshot of
instructional practice, staff member
assessment gives staff members and
educational institutions means for
improving instruction in an ongoing
fashion.
• Observation reports should be
unemotional, factual accounts of
what happened throughout the
lecture (e.g., Lecture began
promptly; ten students were present;
the warm-up activity lasted ten
minutes.).
• Positively worded critiques are the
mainstay of sound observation
practices. Even problems can be
worded positively to focus on
improvement (e.g., Your
 Conclusion

Professional and self-

development cannot be done in
isolation. These need other people.
By co-operating with others, we can
come to understand better our own
experiences and opinions. We can
also enrich them with the
understandings and experiences of
others.
Staff members need, then, to be
armed with skills and strategies
that they may employ to grow
professionally so as to cope with
the needs arising from specific
situations with increasing self-
direction.
Through sustained discussions and
counseling continuous professional
development is deemed to be the
systematic maintenance,
improvement, and broadening of
knowledge and skill and the
development of personal qualities.
In the process, staff members would
become more aware of their role as
facilitators; of the processes of
communicating and negotiating; of
adequate choices; and of enabling
One way to conduct inquiry within the
overall collaborative paradigm is to
establish a co-operative inquiry group
whose overall intent is that all members
work together fully as co-researchers.
Fundamentally, the idea is that staff
members work together as co-
researchers in exploring, understanding
better some aspects of their life and
work, finding feasible alternatives, and
ultimately changing their environment.
The basic outline of this interaction
needs to be worked out fairly early
on: it is most important, at this
stage, to arrange the project so that
several stages of action and
reflection can be undertaken.

Most theories of group development

suggest that a successful co-
operative group goes through
crucial stages in its life.
• Stage 1- Exploration : exploring
and clarifying specific problems
before attempting to seek solutions.
• Stage 2- Ideation: generating a
range of possible solutions and
promoting a sense of confidence.
• Stage 3- Selection: encouraging
constructive controversy about
appropriate ways forward; and
encouraging critical analysis of
solutions.
• Stage 4- Implementation:
implementing the process
appropriately; and ensuring that the
 Recommendations
• Our fervent hope after all this
discussion is to work together for:

• REGULAR MEETINGS.
• MEMBERSHIP IN INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS.
• MORE LOCAL EDUCATIONAL
PUBLICATIONS.
• EXCHANGING VISITS WITH
UNIVERSITIES.
 REFERENCES
• Al-Ansari S. (2002-2003) A Guide to
Educational Supervision, Ministry of
Education, Kuwait

• - Cogan, M. L. (1973). Clinical supervision.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

• - Diaz-Maggioli, G. (2004). A passion for

learning: staff member-centered professional
development. Alexandria, VA: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.

• - Huberman, M. (1989) La vie des

enseignants – Evolution et bilan d’une
• - Jack C. Richards & David Nunan. 1993.
Second Language staff member
Education, Cambridge University Press.

• - Nolan, J., & Hoover, L. (2003). staff

member supervision and evaluation:
Theory into practice. New York: John
Wiley and Sons.

• - Richard Rosner & Rod Bolitho. 1990.

Currents of Change in English Language
Teaching, Oxford University Press.

• - Ronald Carter & David Nunan.2001. The

Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to
Speakers of Other Languages, Cambridge
University Press.
With many
thanks for
your
participatio
n and
contributio
n.