Professional supervision: a critical appreciative model for pedagogues and social educators

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a strength-based approach of Action Research created in 1980 by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva. The AI derived its theoretical fundamentals from Social Constructionism that believes “words create worlds” through conversations and dialogues between human beings. The AI analyses every process focused on what works in organizational contexts in order to promote a positive change process. AI has been applied in the fields of business and higher education. Recently, in Romania, Stefan Cojocaru led an experimental work using an appreciative supervision approach with social workers. He stated that results have been promising to increase the effectiveness of social supervision with practitioners and, secondly, with their clients. During my doctoral studies I conducted an Action research using a specific approach of educational supervision and Appreciative Inquiry as a framework. I lead cycles of supervision for various groups: university students of degree courses in Education Sciences, social workers without degrees and practitioners, pedagogues and social professional educators. I progressively improved the practical proposal of the social educational supervision approach. This speech offers an overview of results of the conducted Action Research and about the possibility to use the AI framework as a kind of supervision in social educational settings. The presentation also gives some examples about limitations and opportunities of this approach.