The supervisor seeks to formulate categores or find patterns of behavior from the data collected from the inclass observations. The supervisors first responsibility is to take the raw data and convert it in to a recognizable form for the teacher. While cooking the data, the supervisors should also be careful balance presenting the data in a readable form and frominterjecting their own biases by creating conclusions. It is important for the supervisor to find behavior that is actually authentic by ensureing that the behavior is repetitious and that is directly gleaned from the data. Patterns may also be useful to the teacher is they can be supported by theory.
After the patterns are derived from the data, the supervisor may develop categories that describe the nature of the patterns. These categories usually speak to the area of teaching that will be adressed for further supervision ie questioning.
Goldhammer describes a systematic approach to analyze the data. He first scans the data looking for patterns and then reads it closely to pay closer attention to initial patterns discovered during the scan.
The supervisor may select patterns based on saliency or the prominence of the occurrence. It is important to address salient patterns because they may have the greatest effects on student learning, demonstrate that supervision has benefits for the teacher, the teacher may already have an understanding of their behaviors and may respond to their discoveries better than superficial patterns Supervisors should also consider the importance of only discussing a few discovered patterns in the supervisory conference to not overwhelm the teacher. Lastly, supervisors should be careful to approach issues that lack treatability.
Saliency
Frequency, abundance and significance are indicators that a teaching behavior is salent. Additionally, behaviors may be salent if they are connect to important educational theories or if they have relationships to other significant patterns.
Treatability
Clinical supervision s”should be therefor employed to treat superficial behaviors and to treat on a superficial level.”
Doctoral Readings 