Scratching the Knowledge Base Surface of Ministry of Education (MOE) English Teacher Supervisors in Iran

Abstract

Based on the expert observation that the teacher "supervisor's role is, in part, culturally defined" (Bailey, 2006, p.6), and the perceived gap that few supervisors receive formal training, in the current study, the researchers report on the views of Ministry of Education (MOE) teachers and supervisors in the Iranian context as to what constitutes the knowledge base of supervisors. Having conducted qualitative content analysis on the data gleaned from interviews with the teachers and supervisors and open-ended questionnaires, we came up with a framework of supervisory skill/knowledge domains-one encompassing public relations skills, subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and contextual sensitivity. The results show that teachers by and large, by voicing their discontent with current supervisory routines, opt for humanistic supervisory procedures. The study, hoping to be taken up with more supervisory knowledge base studies, ends with advice on building supervisory preparation courses into existing teacher development programs.

Supervisory Feedback Efficiency: Developing a Framework Based on Iranian EFL Teachers’ and Supervisors’ Perceptions

“…This confirms Razmjoo and Rasti's (2014) finding, according to which, contextual knowledge / cultural sensitivity was one of the key components of their supervisory skills / knowledge framework. As Bailey (2006, p. 6) has put it, the supervisor's role is, in part, "culturally defined and conceptually located in the educational and political history of a particular region."…”

“…This finding confirms Razmjoo and Rasti's (2014) four-component framework of supervisory skill/knowledge domains of which developing public relations skills is one. They believe the supervisors' ability to establish rapport and to deem themselves on a par with the teachers is a main prerequisite for carrying out supervisory responsibilities.…”

“…Investigating the knowledge base of Ministry of Education (MOE) supervisors in Iran, Razmjoo and Rasti (2014) came up with a four-component framework of supervisory skill/knowledge domain which includes public relations skills, subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and contextual sensitivity. The framework has clear implications for supervisory feedback efficiency.…”

Teachers' personality types and their attitude toward receiving and employing postobservation feedback

“…One of the shared supervisors' responsibilities is teacher observations (Akbari & Yazdanmehr, 2012; Sadeghi & Richards, 2015). Supervisor in Iran has unfortunately turned into a notorious title (Razmjoo & Rasti, 2014) which is usually limited to a bureaucratic job suppressing teachers' creativity and autonomy (Rahmany et al, 2014). This notoriety might be the offspring of the dismissing power of observation; that is, teachers can be dismissed due to low performance in the observations (Gholaminejad, 2020).…”