Critique Chapter 2: Instructional Supervision

The chapter presented by team EFG was very well prepared and covers the main parts of

it: the intents of instructional supervision, differentiated and developmental supervision, as well

as the styles that support both differentiated and developmental supervision. I believe that

instructional supervision is crucial for the improvement of teachers’ performance and students’

learning, since its “aims are formative and focus efforts with teachers to promote growth,

development, interaction, fault-free problem solving, and a commitment to build capacity”

(Zepeda, 2017, p. 24). We should recall that there is no a one-size-fits-all approach to

supervision, since all teachers are different: they have different experiences, backgrounds, age,

needs, etc. This makes the task of the supervisor a very important one: s/he must be a very

experienced and competent person who is able to figure out the needs and wants of the teachers

as well as the importance of these aspects to impact students’ learning.

Both differentiated and developmental types of supervisions need to be considered and

applied depending on the audience and their behaviors. Differentiated supervision makes me

recall the concept of “differentiated instruction,” which consists of identifying the needs of

students in order to provide them a suitable way of learning a concept different to the way a

teacher would do it with other kinds students, such as more advanced or weak students. The

same happens to teachers; they come from different experiences and backgrounds that a

supervisor might provide them with options about the types of supervision and evaluations they

need. On the other hand, supervisors should also consider developmental supervision whenever

s/he identifies the conceptual level of the teacher and therefore apply an approach that matches
this level. I think that an approach would not work for all teachers since all teachers’ conceptual

level is totally different to one another.

These last ideas made me think of this school year’s new teachers at my school. Our

principal has been actively engaged in their performance and the way they carry out their job

considering teacher-student relationship, performance in the classroom, discipline matters,

knowledge of the objectives of the school, as well as lesson planning and its application. I

consider that if our principal would spend the same amount of time coaching new teachers and

veteran ones, she would never finish trying to leverage our performance. She for sure applied the

principal ideas related to both differentiated and developmental supervision for the good of the

school’s main objective: teacher development and students’ learning.

Works Cited

Zepeda, S. (2017). Instructional Supervision: Applying Tools and Concepts. New York, NY:

Routledge.