Documentos ubicados en los enfoques de la Educación Matemática

The study has several limitations. First, it is a case study of practice at only one institution, BUU. Practice at BUU may or may not have been typical of all Thai universities at that time. Second, the guideline was developed by only a small group of volunteers, all of whom were majors in English who also trialed it. Thus the guideline may be relevant only to supervision of English major trainees rather than trainees across all majors. In addition, volunteers‟ positive attitude to its contents as revealed in trialing is not to be taken at face value since they were essentially self-evaluating their own work. Third, the research was undertaken almost ten years ago. Since then the period of teaching practice has been extended in Thailand by one semester. What changes in arrangements for teaching practice supervision may have been made as results were not investigated.

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8.4 Interpretation

The length of teaching practice in Thailand was extended to two semesters in 2008. The extension reflected its perceived importance for ST development. It is an additional cost to taxpayers. It advantages Faculties of Education who can recruit more staff. It adds to the burden on schools and especially on SCHS, more of whom are likely to be involved. An important issue for future research is whether it improves teaching skills of ST. On the model illustrated by this project improvement is highly unlikely.

This study identified two criteria for evaluating the development of a guideline for teaching practice: fidelity and utility. Fidelity refers to whether espoused beliefs and values of supervisors as expressed in the guideline were reflected in their actions to implement it; utility refers to whether acting on those recommendations improved perceptions of the quality of teaching practice experience for all

concerned.

With regard to fidelity it may be said that a few recommendations appear to have been fully implemented, others partly and some not at all. The „road map‟ and the concept of collaborative, amicable supervision in looking after ST seem to have been largely accepted wholeheartedly and acted on; script-taping observations and post-lesson discussion were implemented only partially, while post-observation meetings were planned for at only one site.

Of course the guideline did not address some important issues as this formative evaluation has clarified. These include: lesson plan format, the underlying concepts of the clinical supervision cycle, and BUU assessment criteria.

With regard to utility, guideline was useful in some respects, such as promoting collaborative relationships between supervisors who trialed it – which may be a product of workshops as much as anything else. What the trial also highlighted is that its advice was in many respects not implementable because of the

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that these are outcomes of how managers in BUU and schools conceptualize teaching practice. Specifically they reflect that:

1. BUU Faculty of Education senior management does not view supervision of ST on teaching practice as a priority for BUUS as shown by its:

(a) Allocating supervision workloads that make collaborative amicable supervision impossible for many BUUS to realize;

(b) Providing inadequate documentation to BUUS on procedures to be observed at schools in supervising teaching practice, including working collegially with SCHS, checking and providing feedback to ST on lesson plans, observation techniques, supervising skills related to providing feedback, coaching and mentoring, understanding and being able to explain and justify BUU assessment criteria. Of course providing documentation is insufficient in itself; as Slick (1997) observes: “Training in all aspects of supervision is necessary”;

(c) Adopting a „mindless‟ view of teaching practice, instead of taking a position informed by current debates in the literature. Basically it would appear that BUU subscribes to a traditional view of supervision where school staff „look after‟ ST while busy BUUS staff pay a „flying visit‟, observe a lesson and make an ex cathedra judgment on its quality in terms of BUU criteria, with little or no explanation to ST or SCHS or justification. This is essentially a 19th century inspection model as described by Sullivan and Ganz (2000). Visits of „surprise‟ are a standard feature of this hierarchical model, indicating a lack of trust between inspector and the inspected.

2. BUU Faculty of Education lacks a philosophy of teacher development. The idea of „clinical supervision‟ that underlay the recommendation in the guideline to hold pre- and post-lesson discussions seems unfamiliar to both BUUS and to SCHS. Even the best developed guideline needs to be based on such a philosophy that may be justified on empirical/logical grounds, that is expressed in terms of

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practical procedures and processes, that trains staff so that they have a critical understanding of these procedures, and that monitors and evaluates their use. Though amicable supervision reflects a collaborative philosophy of teacher education that reflects Thai cultural values, its apparent weakness is that it lacks a rationale for teacher development. As noted in the literature review (p. 23), such a rationale seems currently best provided by the developmental model. It

conceptualizes ST development in stages from ego-centric to child-centered to professional/reflective. As noted by Glickman and Gordon (1987), it aims “to increase every teacher‟s ability to grow towards higher stages of thought. More reflective, self-directed teachers will be better able to solve their own instructional problems and meet their students‟ educational needs (p. 64)”. The developmental model stresses that the (trainee) teacher is the prime source of their own

development. Like all learning, the impetus to develop must come from the individual. Adoption of such a philosophy would have implications for the university-based component of the initial teacher education program. It would require that passive learning from lectures gives way to practical experiences such as mini-teaching tasks to peers and others, self- and externally assessed on criteria that students internalize. It would be a program geared to preparing ST for their role as teachers and would imply a radically different approach to the teaching program that ST undertook in schools.