Keith Acheson and Meredith Gall’s

Technical Supervisionvs.

Madeline Hunter’s Decision Making

Half Baked or Fully Baked?A Comparison

Copyright Lisa Buck 2006

Acheson and Gall need to acquire

specific intellectual &

behavioral skills to improve instruction.

Hunter should be expert

diagnosticians: base decisions about instruction on

principles derived from science of

human learning.

Rationale - Teachers…

Rationale Supervisors…

Acheson and Gall have responsibility to help teachers develop skills-includes ability to analyze instruction using systematic data and to experiment, adapt, and modify the curriculum.

Hunter

can help teachers by observing them in action and by documenting the presence or absence of research-based cause-and-effect relationships between teacher behavior and student learning.

Acheson and Gall

…the professional development of teachers, with a special focus on performance in the classroom.

The Primary Goal of Clinical Supervision…

Acheson and Gall• Furnishing teachers with unbiased feedback

concerning their instruction.• Diagnosing and solving problems related to

instruction. • Helping teachers to acquire skill in

instructional techniques.• Evaluating teacher performance for making

decisions about promotion & tenure.• Helping teachers acquire positive attitudes

related to on going professional growth.

Goals Clarified

The Essence of Teaching …

Hunter

….is Decision Making

Decision Making Clarified

Hunter

Decisions are derived from the scientific study of human learning.

Process

Acheson and Gall

• Stage 1: Planning conference.

• Stage 2: Classroom observation.

• Stage 3: Feedback conference.

Process

Hunter• Phase 1: In-service • Phase 2: Observation and script taping • Phase 3: Analysis

• Phase 4: Conference

• Phase 5. Follow-up

Six Conference TypesHunter

• Type A Instructional Conference• Type B Instructional Conference• Type C Instructional Conference• Type EX Instructional Conference• Type E Evaluative Conference

Distinguishing Features

Acheson and Gall

• rationalized approach, strives for democratic interaction between teacher & supervisor.

• objective classroom reality assumed: can be counted, tallied, & measured with variety of techniques for recording classroom observations.

• supervisors avoid giving teachers direct advice.• teachers & supervisors encouraged to develop

own individual style within set of parameters.• practical compromise between clinical

supervision & formal summative evaluation is possible.

Distinguishing Features Hunter

• effective teaching viewed 1st as a science, then an art.

• preobservation conference considered unnecessary & even undesirable.

• supervisor records verbatim transcript of words & behaviors during lesson using method of shorthand called script taping.

• data analyzed by supervisor - labels patterns of teacher behavior using specific preexisting categories.

• person who supervises teachers to improve instruction is preferably same person who evaluates them for purposes of tenure and contract renewal.

In Summary

Acheson and Gall Preference for supervision

centers on teachers concerns; is democratic instead of autocratic and is interactive instead of directive.

In Summary

Hunter The essence of teaching is decision making.

Principles of effective teaching that are derived from the scientific study of human learning can be used to guide teachers’ behavior so that more students learn and all students learn faster. Teaching can become and art form when teachers consciously and deliberately combine specific procedures of diagnosis and decision making with intuition to guide their practice. Furthermore, these principals of teaching can be both taught and learned.

Meet the Authors

• Keith A. Acheson, professor emeritus - University of Oregon

• B.S., 1948• M.S., 1951, Lewis and Clark • Ed.D., 1964, Stanford. (1967)

University of Oregon EDUCATIONPh.D., Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, 1968.Ed.M., Developmental Psychology, Harvard School of Education, 1963.A.B., English, Harvard University, 1963

Meet the AuthorsMeredith Gall

Hunter, Madeline Cheek (1916–1994)

• Entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), at the age of sixteen. She earned four degrees in psychology and education. In the early 1960s Hunter became principal of the University Elementary School, the laboratory school at UCLA, where she worked under John Goodlad. She left the school in 1982 amidst controversy over her methods, but continued at UCLA as a professor in administration and teacher education.

• The creator of the Instructional Theory Into Practice (ITIP) teaching model, an inservice/staff development program widely used during the 1970s and 1980s.

Meet the Authors