story by Susan Fishman
Teacher educators spend a significant amount of time preparing pre-service teachers and supervising them during their student teaching school placements.
Over recent years, several circumstances like school closures, limited resources, increasingly strict visitation and security policies in schools prompted Associate Professor Rachel Gurvitch, Assistant Professor Xiaolu Liu and College of Education & Human Development alum Wellington De Luna (Ph.D. '25) to rethink supervision.
Specifically, they were interested in studying remote supervision, its effectiveness and its impact on student teachers. Their initial hope was to better understand how others were implementing remote supervision and what the research revealed about its outcomes across different content areas and preparation programs.
The team conducted a systematic review of recent studies (2010-2022), published in Technology, Pedagogy and Education. Because remote supervision inherently involves the integration of technology, they adopted the SAMR framework to help categorize and analyze the technological dimensions of supervision practices. They examined how technology has been utilized in remote supervision practice at the levels of Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition (SAMR).
Two key findings emerged from the research:
- The majority of studies (18 out of 20) centered within the enhancement category of the SAMR framework indicate that most current remote supervision practices use technology to improve efficiency and convenience (e.g., video conferencing, recording lessons), but these practices do not fundamentally transform supervision.
- Technology enhances remote supervision through increased flexibility, more timely and detailed feedback, replay capabilities and expanded access for rural or geographically isolated placements. However, its impact is constrained by technical issues (camera angles, connectivity, audio/video quality) and relationship limitations (limited relationship developments due to limited supervision interaction).
These findings are meaningful, according to Gurvitch, because they help challenge the idea that integration of technology equals transformation. They point to the need for more intentional design when integrating technology into teacher education supervision practice.
Gurvitch adds that emerging technologies, such as AI-supported feedback systems and immersive virtual environments, have the potential to fundamentally reshape the supervision practice.
“The move of remote supervision from the enhancement to the transformation category is contingent on educators’ and researchers’ shift in focus — from the level of ‘How can we use technology in remote supervision?’ to ‘How can technology help us redesign remote supervision in ways that lead to new, authentic outcomes?’”