EFL Teacher-Supervisors’ Attitudes toward Supervision in Iranian Language Schools (Research Paper)

This qualitative study explored EFL teacher-supervisors’ attitudes toward supervision in Iranian language schools. Based on a researcher-developed protocol, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven supervisors from Iranian language schools to identify their attitudes, experiences, and challenges regarding supervision. The interviews drew upon emergent methodology to categorize the interviewees’ value-laden comments into four major attitudinal themes, namely becoming a supervisor, with five subthemes of characteristics of a good and ideal supervisor, change in supervision style over the time, missing their teaching job, supervision training, and supervisors’ reasons to choose this line of work; supervisors’ responsibilities, with three subthemes of challenges regarding teacher supervision, organizational conflicts within the school, and supervisors’ difficult decisions; observation procedure and protocol, with one subtheme of keeping required logs and documentation; and rapport and positive relationship with teachers and administrative staff. The findings revealed that the teacher-supervisors are promoted to supervisory roles most often due to their outstanding teaching performance and academic credentials with no formal training on supervision. They also voiced some ethical conflicts they face in this position such as firing teachers or critically commenting on their friends’ performance. Supervisors highlighted the fact that their workload is too demanding with many other presumably non-supervisory responsibilities. The results of the current study provide some pedagogical implications that can be of benefit for EFL teachers, educators, teacher-supervisors and managers in Iranian language schools.