The status of supervision as a specific profession has been discussed in many fields, including business and industry, psychology, social work, and education. Writing about supervision in general education, Alfonso, Firth, and Neville have said:
A major deterrent to full professional status of educational supervisors is an ill-defined knowledge base and a lack of an agreed-upon set of professional skills. Every profession equips its members with a conceptual and intellectual base from which skills are derived and expressed in practice. The skills of instructional supervision, however, have remained remarkably undefined and random, partly because the theoretical base is so thin. Moreover, the skills that are used are generally acquired on the job, rather than during professional preparation and internship. (1984:16)
The negative side of supervision has earned it some colorful nicknames, such as the “reluctant profession” (Mosher and Purpel, 1972). Supervision has also been referred to as “snoopervision” and as “managing messes” (Schön, 1983:14). The ongoing relationship between teachers and supervisors has even been called a “private cold war” (Blumberg, 1980).
Tensions in the supervisor-teacher relationship
In general education, where surprise evaluation visits are common, teachers have resorted to signals to alert one another about unannounced observations. Black documented teachers using the code warning “the ghost walks” to communicate that the school principal was making surprise classroom visits (1993:38). In another context, she says a note reading “Stand and deliver!” was passed along the corridors to spread the word that supervisory visits were imminent (ibid.). Clearly these phrases indicate a certain level of tension in the relationship between teachers and supervisors.
