INSTRUCTIONAL SUPERVISION IN TURKEY

Abstract

Instructional supervision is an important issue in Turkey, a country where one million teachers are employed. These supervisions are conducted with the aim of improving the quality of education for students and evaluating the performance of teachers. In addition, the instructional supervision process also contributes to the professional development of teachers. Education inspectors working in provinces have been given the task of supervising the instructions of candidate and contracted teachers every year. Generally, education inspectors are expected to monitor the instructional supervision conducted by school principals, rather than directly conducting instructional supervision themselves. In other words, the task of instructional supervision actually was left on school principals in Turkey. There is no legal form that the school principal must use for conducting instructional supervision. This situation prevents instructional supervision from reaching a certain standard and causes school principals to conduct instructional supervision within the framework of their own understanding. Thus, the function of accurately identifying the existing situation through observation cannot be performed effectively. When the feedback element of the system does not work, the development of the teaching and learning depends on the personal will and effort of the teacher. However, it can be said that a more professional and effective approach should be adopted in the instructional supervision process, and it should be conducted regularly in every school.