Teachers’ professional development happens, and is encouraged, by an effective school leadership responsible for this development as well as for the organizational development and learning culture (Day & Sachs, 2004; Hargreaves & Fink, 2006). School is a learning organization (Senge, 1990) where leadership, organizational culture andteacher’s professional development are intensely intertwined in bio-ecological development cross-contexts (Brofenbrenner, 1996).

 Considering this argument, we wish to integrate the concept of supervision, as a learning process and life enduring training. Several Portuguese and international studies underline that pedagogical supervision, during pre-service teacher education, is a strong asset for the development of the future teachers (Zeichner, 1993; Oliveira-Formosinho, 2002; Alarcão & Roldão, 2008).

However, the support (helping to Shein, 2009), assistance and critical thoughthat are given to the future teachers during this initial training are interrupted at the beginning of their professional life. That restrains a fundamental base of institutional support and intentional stimulus to the reflexive thought, often limited by the intense and demanding activity.

A research by Alarcão (2002) on the University of Aveiro has shown a new approach to supervision within the organizational context of the school, what is called institutional supervision. According to her analysis, the reconceptualization proposed justifies itself because the main object of the supervision activity is the quality of the teachers training and their action. Therefore, it “must be seen not simply in the classroom context, but in the broader context of the school (…) that also learn and develop itself” (op cit., p. 218).

This collaborative supervision, while being an on-purpose opportunity for learning and reflection on, over and for the schooling activity (Fitzgerald, 2010), also becomes a support for an in-context evaluation of teachers, which enhances monitoring function rather than controlling (Hadji, 2010).

This paper presents some results of an investigation about the relation between teachers’ professional development and an organizational process named institutional supervision (Alarcão, 2002; Fitzgerald, 2010). After discussing the principal international studies on teachers’ supervision and the state of the art of this concept, we analyse the results of a survey to evaluate what teachers think about the concept of supervision and its contribution for their own professional development.

The theoretical framework presented justify the need for studying what do teachers think about supervision and their own professional development, in order to develop supervision models to support teaching activity in each school reality.

The objectives of this part of the global study are:

(1) Enlarge the knowledge about supervision, deepening reconceptualization and articulation with other relevant concepts, mainly the teacher’s professional development.

(2) Analyse the perspective that the education professionals have regarding supervision and its contribution for their own professional development. 

Our survey aims at understanding:

1.     1 - What do teachers think about (institutional) supervision?

2  2-.Do teachers feel necessity of any kind of support or help to deal with the difficulties of an intense and demanding activity in school? 

3   3 -Do teachers recognize authority and ability on other colleagues to evaluate their work and watch their classes in a cooperative way?

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