Understanding Humanistic Supervision and Administrative Pressure in the Experiences of Primary School Teachers

Abstract

Instructional supervision in primary education is increasingly recognized as an essential component of teacher development, particularly as schools navigate rising administrative demands and relational expectations. Within this context, understanding teachers’ lived experiences has become a crucial focus for research seeking to clarify how emotional, cultural, and organizational dynamics shape professional meaning. However, little is known about how teachers interpret humanistic supervision when it coexists with substantial bureaucratic pressure, raising the central question of how they negotiate and make sense of this dual experience. Here, we use an interpretative phenomenological approach to reveal how teachers construct meaning from the intersection of supportive supervisory practices and administrative workload. The study involved a total of 12 primary school teachers, generating approximately 18 hours of recorded interviews from in-depth semi-structured sessions. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews with primary school teachers, the study analyzed their narratives using interpretative phenomenological analysis to identify the emotional, relational, and identity-based processes that underlie their supervisory experiences. The findings show that teachers perceive humanistic supervision as simultaneously validating and demanding, engage in emotional negotiation to maintain their professional identity, and employ adaptive strategies to balance relational support with institutional expectations. These narrative patterns demonstrate that the essence of supervision lies more in interpersonal meaning-making than in formal supervisory procedures. The results therefore illuminate how teachers internalize supervision as a lived experience shaped by the ongoing tension between support and pressure. These insights broaden current theoretical understanding of supervision and offer implications for future research aimed at developing supervisory models that honor both human experience and systemic responsibility.