Through a narrative, participatory research process the voices and experiences of three bilingual high school students are presented and interpreted through a critical pedagogical lens.

Teacher supervision is suffering from a legacy of being affiliated with an outmoded integration of science and technology. Dialectical supervision, which emphasizes empowering teachers with ways of knowing that involve continually confronting themselves and searching for more responsive and less dominant educative practices, is proposed as an oppositional view to that of hierarchical scientific management of teaching.

A call to consider assertive forms of school leadership.

Teacher evaluation can be a potent school-improvement tool not because it puts a floor under classroom practices—the goal of accountability-based evaluation models—but because it addresses the incentives central to individual development and the teacher’s sense of professionalism. Evaluation when seen in this light cannot be subjected to the quick fix, but requires the interaction of a host of factors that build on the norms and values central to the teaching profession.

It is the author’s perception that the concern with theory research has faltered. In the past, he has offered three or four standard answers to that question: 1. The concern for theory based research became a movement and ran out of steam; 2. The nature of the research professorship in educational administration; 3. The nature of the research professor in educational administration; 4. The encounter of the movement with the 1960s.