Good or bad visits? An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the experience of supervised college teachers in Central China

Wenting Gong, Chuang Xu and Jian-Hong Ye ()
Additional contact information
Wenting Gong: Hunan Institute of Technology
Chuang Xu: Hunan Institute of Technology
Jian-Hong Ye: Beijing Normal University

Palgrave Communications, 2025, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Instructional supervision, an internal, dynamic system for monitoring and evaluating teaching quality in Chinese colleges, positively impacts teaching quality assurance and enhancement. While prior studies have theoretically explored instructional supervision, few have examined how supervised college teachers perceive, interpret, and respond to supervision experiences and how their noticing shifts under supervised circumstances. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), this study explored the supervised experiences of eight Chinese college teachers in Central China through written narratives and semi-structured interviews. Three core themes emerged: supervisors’ existence, teachers’ emotions, and students’ performance, and six sub-themes related to supervisors, teachers and students were also identified: the symbolic person and the embodied actions, the sudden nervousness and the gradual relaxation, the unexpected cooperation and the closer teacher-student rapport. These interconnected themes form a dynamic chain of progressive noticing, and indicating that instructional supervision acts as a catalyst for teacher noticing shifts, a spark for teachers’ emotional labor, and a facilitator of teacher-student rapport. This study not only broadens the scope of instructional supervision but also offers new insights into enhancing college teachers’ professional development and teaching effectiveness within similar higher education institutions.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-025-05655-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-05655-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-05655-5

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().