Supervision of itinerant teachers: Perspectives from itinerant teachers and those who supervise them.

Abstract

In relation to the conditions in which traveling teachers worked, participants reported the conditions that most often got in the way of their ability to effectively do their jobs were difficulties with travel, adapting to each site, lack of communication, feelings of alienation, confusion over multiple supervisors, and a lack of administrative understanding of itinerancy.

The two major elements that itinerant teachers believed would improve their instructional practices and effectiveness were supervisor understanding of the complexities of the itinerant experience, and supervisors who were knowledgeable about the content areas taught by itinerant teachers. The teachers all reported that more informal types of supervision, from qualified and competent supervisors and colleagues, could increase their effectiveness. The participants in this study, both the teachers and those who supervised them, developed their own lexicon that represented various forms of supervision and evaluation. For example, it was noted that the itinerant teachers utilized such terms as "forced supervision" and "legal supervision" to describe teacher evaluation. For the participants in this study, the words supervision and evaluation were often used interchangeably.

Both the itinerant teachers and their supervisors were interviewed to examine their experiences with supervision as it related to itinerancy. Utilizing a phenomenological lens, the researcher sought first to understand the conditions in which itinerant teachers worked and then to understand the perceptions about supervision from both the teachers' and supervisors' points-of-view.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the supervision of itinerant teachers as reported by nine itinerant teachers and four administrators who were responsible for supervising this narrow population of teachers. The participants were purposefully selected from across three suburban school districts in Oklahoma that had itinerant teacher populations of between 12 and 15%.

The administrators reported that a better understanding of itinerancy would help them to make adjustments needed for more effective supervision for the traveling teachers, and that supervisors should attempt to learn as much as possible about the content area of those they supervised in order to increase administrator credibility. The administrators in this study cited opening lines of communication, supervising itinerants across sites, and increasing the frequency of supervision to be important.

Although the itinerant teachers and supervisors indicated a level of dissatisfaction with the state of itinerant teacher supervision, both agreed that supervision was important to the development of teachers. The participants believed that changes in supervisory practice such as peer coaching should be made to ensure more meaningful experiences that could result in further growth and development for the itinerant teacher.