ABSTRACT

Dominique Banville

E-mail Address: dbanvill@gmu.edu

The impact of a Clinical Supervision Course on the Supervisory Practices of Physical Education Teachers.

The student-teaching experience "has been regarded historically as the most important experience in the professional preparation of teachers" (Tannehill & Zakrajsek, 1988, p.1). According to Silberman (1970) the value of the student teaching experience is dependent upon the cooperating teacher with whom interns are placed. A common problem among cooperating teachers is pointed out by Church (1976 in Tannehill & Zakrajsek, 1988) who notes that, cooperating teachers usually have a good knowledge base in their subject matter but lack knowledge in the supervision field. In the last five years, over 100 physical education teachers in a local school districts have been asked to supervise interns from the physical education licensure program at George Mason University (Virginia) and most of them have not received any preparation for supervising this important experience.

The Graduate School of Education at GMU has previously offered a supervision course to teachers. Typically however, very few physical education specialists took part in this course. During summer 99/fall 99, the course was specifically offered to specialist teachers (music, special education and physical education teachers). It attracted 12 physical education teachers from elementary and secondary schools.

The goal of this project is to determine the impact of the clinical supervision course on the supervision skills of those physical education teachers. More specifically, the objectives will be a) to compare the content and focus of the verbal and written interactions that occur between a trained supervisor and his/her interns versus those that occur between an untrained supervisor and his/her interns, and b) to determine to what extent the content learned throughout a supervision course is used during the supervision of interns. Data collection will start in the Fall of 2000 and will be done through interviews, collection of written material exchange between cooperating teachers and interns, and videotaped interactions of cooperating teachers and interns before, while and after teaching experiences. (311 words)

References:

Tannehill, D. & Zakrajsek, D. (1988). What's happening in supervision of student teachers in secondary physical education. JTPE, 8 (1), 1-12.

Silberman, C.E. (1970). Crisis in the classroom. New York: Random House.

Dominique Banville, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Department of Health, Fitness and Recreation Resources

George Mason University

4400 University Drive, MS 1F6

Fairfax, VA, 22030-4444

Tel: (703) 993-3579; Fax: (703) 993-2126

email: dbanvill@gmu.edu