A Modest Proposal for Changing Teacher Education

As we design and promote innovation and general educational development, frequently the university curriculum is the last subject to be addressed—the ultimate charter in educating preservice teachers. Characteristically, the university has tended to resist significant operational change as it affected teacher education.1 In this paper we suggest that a prime example of unchanging approaches to teacher education is the continuation of the practice of "supervision." This paper is a critique of conventional supervisory practices and contains within it a modest proposal for a new model for field-based teacher education that espouses the role of "clinical professor " in lieu of "supervisor, " draws from the field of social psychology, and is oriented toward an inquiry approach to teacher education. THE PROBLEM Supervision is in many ways the most nebulous of educational callings. Within the school district the word usually applies to someone who coordinates curriculum development and occasionally passes on the competencies of teachers. In the university it generally refers to the professor or graduate student who, from time to time, visits the education student's assigned classroom, engages in appropriate conferences, and recommends the teaching candidate for certification. I