Amany Saleh

This qualitative descriptive study examined how school leaders in Arkansas and Tennessee, as part of their teacher supervision responsibilities, encourage and support teachers’ reflection as a key component of professional growth. Drawing on supervision and reflection literature, the research focused on what leaders do to move away from simply checking evaluation criteria boxes and instead work alongside teachers to drive meaningful improvement. Data were collected from interviews with 16 school leaders across both states and analyzed for common patterns. The findings revealed three key themes: (1) purposeful questioning and reflective dialogue help develop teacher agency; (2) leadership strategies such as building trust and modeling vulnerability foster reflective practice; and (3) challenges include time constraints, veteran teacher resistance to change, and lack of trust in the evaluator’s feedback. The findings indicate that leaders view reflection as essential to shifting supervision from monitoring to partnership. Effectiveness, however, depends on intentionally creating non-evaluative contexts and embedding reflection in school routines. This study offers practical insights for reframing supervision as a collective, growth-oriented process within instructional leadership.

Educators learn through reflection on how power shapes their own practices, expressing their concerns about the constraints they face, and brainstorming solutions to address them. Educators create and adjust their philosophies and practices by reflecting on how abstract theories manifest themselves in life. The online discussion format affords students the opportunity to improve their reflective practices through the use of structured questions, supervised scaffolding, shared experience, and opportunities to connect theory to practice. In essence, online discussions offer educators a dynamic and energetic atmosphere in which they can interact with each other. The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of online discussions on students’ critical skills as they reflect on issues dealing with students’ diversity. The results demonstrated that the use of structured online discussions contributed to the elevation of graduate students’ reflective practices as they contemplated the social and cultural issues that impact students’ learning and their educational practices.

In our globally and technologically connected world, many universities raced to offer online, college degrees to populations who otherwise would not have access to higher education. They promised high quality, rigorous, flexible, accessible, and affordable programs. Colleges and universities pledged to support these students to ensure theirsuccess within an online environment. However, Canchola (2011) argued that online students rarely receive the support they were promised. Sandeen and Barr (2006) argued many online programs increase students’ dissatisfaction with higher education and increase their drop-out rate. As a result, such programs rather than help students achieve their goals; they set them back academically and financially. This serves only to intensify The Matthew Effect for students. The authors offer recommendations for alleviating TheMatthew Effect and share guidelines for maintaining high quality, responsive online education.