The State of Supervision Discourse Communities: A Call for the Future of Supervision to Shed Its Mask

This article reviews the various discourse communities that can be found throughout the field of supervision. Over the last several decades, the field has largely struggled with its identity. The struggle to define supervision, as well as supervision scholarship being forced to travel incognito to survive (Glanz & Hazi, 2019), has largely been due to a lack of an academic journal to serve as a publishing venue dedicated solely to issues of educational supervision. As the Journal of Educational Supervision continues to evolve from inception to fruition (Mette & Zepeda, 2019), it is important to keep supervision discourse communities vibrant and growing, as well as to help the field move forward. Additionally, supervision scholars must acknowledge the realities of policies facing practitioners in order to better bridge the research-practice-policy gap. The continual development of these five discourse communities – as well as any cross-pollination among them and preparation for emergent discourse communities – is paramount to the future of supervision.