EDH 7326: Supervised Teaching II (Spring 2015)

EDH 7326: Supervised Teaching II (Spring 2015)

This course is designed to provide new graduate assistants with a foundation for studying their teaching (coursework and supervision) at the collegiate level. The course requires students to consider challenges and issues involved in the teaching and supervision of undergraduate students, reflect on their instruction and supervision, read, reflect, and discuss the pre-service teacher education literature, and enact an inquiry plan to study their teaching. While scholarly, it also is highly practical, requiring students to practice enacting their pedagogies of teacher education (Loughran, 2006, 2007) and their pedagogies of supervision. The assignments are designed to give students the opportunity to wrestle with authentic problems of their practice while simultaneously being supported within a community of practice of teacher educators. It is my first doctoral level course.

All doctoral students are required to develop and maintain a professional web space. Each week students are required to write a reflective blog entry where they are asked to summarize the readings, interact with the content, and make connections from the course content to their practice as supervisors and to their inquiry. Reflective entries are due 48 hours prior to class. I read each post and respond to each one. I use the reflective entries to identify misconceptions and to guide the in class discussions. Students also are encouraged to respond to each other, as you can see in this student's reflective blog entry on cognitive coaching and clinical supervision. Dr. Jim Nolan, a scholar of supervision and teacher education, even responded to some of the students' work and as a result, we held a Skype call with him to continue the conversation. Most students are particularly reflective and I find this strategy incredibly beneficial for me to understand how they are processing course concepts and to tailor each class to meet their needs. I also reflect on my teaching by posting reflective entries.

Mid-semester course feedback revealed that students felt incrediblly supported and are really enjoying the class, but they are struggling the rigor and high expectations, particularly associated with the amount of reading required.