Dr. Kathi Bailey (2 credits)

Have you been asked to supervise other teachers? Would you like to broaden your supervision skills and discuss your experiences with others? Learn about recent research on effective supervision of language teachers, hone your observation skills, and gain new perspectives on conducting post-observation conferences and evaluating teachers. Contexts addressed include working with pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, teaching assistants and non-native speaking language teachers.

Next offering: Course under development

Course Description

This two-unit seminar is designed to prepare language teachers for their possible future roles as language teacher supervisors.  This course was designed because many language teachers are moved into supervisory roles without any formal preparation. However, the skills and knowledge needed to be an effective language teacher are not necessarily isomorphic with those needed to be an effective language teacher supervisor.

Goals 

This seminar has several broad goals, which are intended to help the participants prepare for their future roles as language teacher supervisors. Participants will:

• clearly understand current models of, and research on, language teacher supervision;
• practice observing language teachers for supervisory purposes;
• gain experience in conducting post-observation conferences with language teachers;
• develop strategies and verbal skills for providing feedback in clear and professional terms;
• analyze supervisory discourse in order to improve their own feedback skills;
• examine a number of supervisory contexts in our field (e.g., working with pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, Teaching Assistants (TAs), non-native speaking teachers, etc.); and
• clearly understand the issues related to language teacher evaluation, and the differences between evaluative supervision and developmental supervisory functions.

Given these goals, students enrolled in this seminar must have teaching experience and must have successfully completed the Monterey Institute introductory observation class (or the equivalent), as well as the Monterey Instittute Principles and Practices of Language Teaching course (or the equivalent).

Course Materials

There is one required text book for this course: Bailey, Kathleen M. (2006), Language teacher supervision: A case-based approach. (Cambridge University Press). Additional readings will be available electronically on the Monterey Institute's Library Reserve system. A list of available reserve readings will be posted on the course Moodle.

Assignments

Working individually or in pairs, seminar participants will be responsible for preparing a solution to a decision case and for leading the group in a discussion of a decision case. The cases are found in the textbook. Leading the case discussions is required but will not be graded.

There are two graded assignments for this seminar. The first paper (30%) involves teaching a lesson and receiving supervisory feedback. The second graded assignment (70%) involves observing three lessons and giving supervisory feedback. In each assignment, students will record, transcribe, and analyze the supervisory interaction, using conceptual frameworks introduced in class.