Personal Reflections on Supervision as Instructional Leadership: From Whence It Came and To Where Shall It Go?

The field of supervision has perennially struggled to define itself and, hence, find a niche within the larger field of education and, more narrowly, even within the field of instructional leadership. A sort of an odd, almost contradictory state exists, one in which precludes, in my opinion, the field of supervision from gaining traction as a field, but also, perhaps more importantly, as an influential practice in schools. Books on supervision seem popular, but only in title. In others words, publishers, for instance, prefer the word supervision as part of the title of books they publish on the subject, whereas scholars in the field tend to eschew the term in favor of a term, perhaps, more palatable such as instructional or pedagogical leadership. Scholars in our field have had to grapple with this bifurcation. This essay discusses some of the implications of the intractable nature of supervision theory and practice and its relationship with the emergence of newer, more preferred terms. This essay attempts to clarify the relationships among supervision, instructional leadership, pedagogical leadership, and some other terms bandied about in the field. Are there differences between and among them? What are the implications for the field of supervision, as well as for the world of practice