INQUIRY-BASED SUPERVISION
AS AN OPTION

Inquiry-based supervision in the form of action research is an option that can represent an individual initiative or a collaborative effort as pairs or teams of teachers work together to solve problems. In action research the emphasis is on the problem-solving nature of the supervisory experience. Mixing the word "research" with such words as "action" or "supervision" may cause some initial confusion. Research, after all, is generally thought to be something mysterious, remote, statistical, and theoretical. And further, teachers and researchers have been thought to occupy two separate ends of a continuum. What is a teacher-researcher anyway? Glenda Bissex (1987) responds as follows:

"To dispel some traditional associations with the word research, I'll begin by saying what a teacher-researcher isn't.

1. A teacher-researcher doesn't have to study hundreds of students, establish control groups, and perform complex statistical analyses.
2. A teacher-research may start out not with a hypothesis to test but with a "wondering" to pursue: 'I wonder how much my students think about their writing outside of class. Vicky mentioned today that she mentally revises compositions on the bus coming to school. What about the others now that they're writing on their own topics?'
3. A teacher-researcher does not have to be antiseptically detached. He knows that knowledge comes through closeness as well as through distance, through intuition as well as through logic.
4. When a teacher-researcher writes about what she's discovered, she need not try to make her writing sound like a psychology textbook. Her audience is herself, other teachers, her students, their parents, her principal, maybe even the school board -- none of whom is likely to be upset by plain English and a personal style.
5. A teacher-researcher is not a split personality with a poem in one hand and a microscope in the other.

   So what is a teacher-researcher?
   A teacher-researcher is an observer, a questioner, a learner, and a more complete teacher." (pp. 3-4)

   When action research is undertaken as an individual initiative, a teacher works closely with the supervisor in sorting out a problem and developing a strategy for its resolution and in sharing findings and conclusions. Implications~ for practice are then identified, and strategies for implementing these changes are then developed. When action research involves collaboration with other teachers, problems are "co-researched," findings are shared, and together teachers ferret out implications for changing in their teaching practice. Among all the options, action research requires the highest level of reflection and promises a great deal with respect to discovering new insights and practices.

   Basic to action research is the belief that individual teachers and groups of teachers can undertake research to improve their own practice. Though increasing understanding and building one's store of conceptual knowledge is important outcome of action research, its prime purpose is to alter the teaching practices of the researchers themselves.