This book presents different ways of viewing the teacher supervision process, based on a study of supervisors and teachers in a graduate program for beginning teachers sponsored by a college of education in the northwestern United States. Data were obtained through interviews, observation, and conversation analysis. Chapter 1 examines beliefs about supervision through an anthropological lens, presenting both various practitioners' and theorists' views of supervision. The second chapter presents research findings on supervision conferences as interactional achievements, with a focus on the supervisor's role and issues of power and control. Chapter 3 examines the same conferences from the teachers' perspectives, using the theoretical frames of teacher socialization and school reform. Teacher resistance is examined in the fourth chapter, allowing for a critique of literature on teacher resistance and a critique of supervision itself. Chapter 5 presents a new approach to supervision--"situationally contexted supervision"--which is based on an anthropological and interactionist view of classrooms and schools. A postmodern theory of "dialogic supervision" is developed in the sixth chapter, an approach that addresses the asymmetries of power relations inherent in conventional supervision. The last chapter discusses the partnership of supervisors and teachers in a professional community. The content of the teacher-supervisor conferences is attached. (Contains 259 references.) (LMI)