In brief
This doctoral study first asked teachers in Denizli how much classroom supervision had contributed to their professional development, and found their ratings low. The author then trained nine primary school principals in Glickman’s developmental supervision model and had them supervise teachers’ lessons over four weeks. Interviews suggested that teachers experienced the new approach as more supportive. In the quantitative tests, however, the experimental and control groups did not differ significantly in how their views changed, and teachers’ attitudes towards professional development and their self-efficacy did not change.
Research problem and aims
Supervision in Turkish schools has long been criticised as inspection-oriented, focused on paperwork and judgement rather than on improving teaching. The thesis asks what role developmental supervision can play in teachers’ professional development. Its nine sub-questions cover teachers’ perceptions of traditional supervision, the effect of a principal training programme, and changes in teachers’ views of supervision, their attitudes towards professional development and their professional development self-efficacy, with each quantitative question paired with interview data.
Conceptual framework
The study is grounded in Glickman’s developmental supervision, in which the supervisor adapts a directive, collaborative or non-directive approach to each teacher’s level of development and commitment. Professional development is defined through Stronge’s teacher competences: classroom management, planning, managing instruction, monitoring student progress and professionalism. Our page on educational supervision models explains the developmental approach and its alternatives.
Method
The study used a multiphase mixed-methods design. In the first phase, teachers in public primary, lower secondary and upper secondary schools in the Pamukkale and Merkezefendi districts of Denizli completed a scale, developed by the researcher, on the contribution of supervision to their professional development; 142 of the 201 schools in the two districts were sampled by stratified cluster sampling.
In the second phase, 20 primary schools were initially selected and 15 remained. Nine principals with at least a year in post took part in a training programme on the developmental supervision model, prepared by the researcher, and were assessed before and after the training with a scenario rubric. These principals then carried out four weeks of developmental supervision with teachers who had experienced at least one earlier lesson observation. In total, 37 teachers formed the experimental group and 24 the control group. Teachers completed the supervision scale, an attitude scale and a self-efficacy scale before and after the intervention, and teachers in the experimental group were interviewed before and after. The data were collected in the 2024–25 school year.
Key findings
In the first phase, teachers’ mean rating of the contribution of supervision to their professional development was 2.45, which the author classifies as very low. Male teachers rated this contribution higher than female teachers.
The principals’ scores on the developmental supervision rubric rose from a mean of 6.89 before the training to 12.44 after it, a statistically significant increase.
For teachers’ views of supervision, a mixed-design ANOVA showed a significant change over time, but the group-by-time interaction did not reach significance (p = .071). Separate paired tests showed a significant increase in the experimental group (from 13.62 to 18.73) and no significant change in the control group. Teachers’ attitudes towards professional development and their professional development self-efficacy did not change significantly in either group. The author suggests that the short duration and the long teaching experience of the participants, nearly all of whom had at least 20 years of service, may explain these results.
The interviews told a more marked story. Before the intervention, teachers described earlier inspections as judgemental, sometimes humiliating and stressful, and focused on paperwork. Afterwards, they described feeling valued and reassured, receiving concrete feedback on planning, questioning and classroom organisation, and paying closer attention to their own teaching. Some teachers said that their commitment to the profession did not depend on supervision either way.
The author concludes that developmental supervision moved the purpose of supervision from control and punishment towards reassurance and empowerment, and recommends that it be built into school-based professional development and principal training.
Limitations and implications
The author notes that the study is limited to primary school principals and teachers in two central districts of Denizli in 2024–25, and to the five areas of teacher competence used to define professional development. The experimental phase involved small groups and a short intervention, and the non-significant interaction and unchanged attitude and self-efficacy scores mean that the strongest claims rest mainly on interview data from the experimental group. Readers should therefore treat the study as promising evidence about how teachers experience developmental supervision rather than as proof of its effect on professional growth.
Why it matters internationally
International reviews have found that intensive, individualised feedback on teaching, as in coaching programmes, can improve instruction, while routine evaluation often has little effect. This study shows how a developmental model works in a system where lesson observation has traditionally been tied to inspection and accountability, and its interview data offer a vivid account of why teachers in such systems may resist supervision. It is also timely: the author links the recommendations to Turkey’s new curriculum framework, which emphasises instructional leadership and continuous professional development.