Download - Adm Super Module 2
MODULE 2
The Decentralization
of Educational
Administration and
Supervision
OVERVIEW
This module on the decentralization of educational administration and
supervision consists of two lessons:
Lesson 1 – The rationale of the Decentralization of Educational
Administration
Lesson 2 – Institution Building and Development
Lesson 1 lists the major activities involved in the enterprise of
education and points out that they may be carried out on either a centralized
or a decentralized basis. It is also pointed out that the term decentralization
is used in a strict sense as well as in a loose sense, and these two senses are
distinguished. Seven major reasons for the increasing trend towards the
decentralization of educational administration are then enumerated and
discussed.
Lesson 2 deals with the different concepts of institution building for
organizations’ renewal and up-grading. It will also explain the structural and
process mechanism for Institution building, and resources and support
systems’ management.
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Lesson 1Rationale for Decentralization
Objectives:
The objectives of this lesson are to provide background information
about the concepts, prevailing trends towards decentralization of educational
administration; and be aware of the strategies and approaches in institution
building and development.
Concepts of “centralized” and “decentralized” systems:
(1982)19
From the Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, “centralize” means: (1) come,
bring to a centre. (2) concentrate the administrative powers in a single
center instead of distributing them among local departments. While
“decentralize” means divide and distribute government functions, and/or
organizations, etc., among local centers.
In other words, centralization is the drawing together of various
institutions and activities along the lines of centralized system: while
decentralization is the process of re-assigning responsibility and
corresponding decision-making authority for specific functions from higher to
lower level of government and educational units . Educational
decentralization is a complex process that deals in a way school systems go
about making policy, generating revenues, spending funds, training
teachers, designing curricula and managing local schools. Such changes
imply fundamental shifts in the values that undergird public education –
values that concern the relationships of students and parents to schools, the
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relationships of communities to central government, and the very meaning
and purpose of public education (Fiske, 1996)
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Nature and Characteristics of Centralization
1. Power and prestige are provided the chief executive.
2. Uniformity of policies, practices & decisions are fostered.
3. Full utilization of the main office specialist is promoted, due in a large
part to the proximity to the top-management level.
4. Highly qualified specialists can be utilized because the scope & volume
of work are sufficient to support and to challenge top-notch
management.
5. Duplication of functions is maintained at a minimum.
6. The danger of action drifting and getting off course is minimized.
7. Elaborate and extensive controlling procedures & practices are not
required.
8. A strong coordinated top management team is developed.
Nature and Characteristics of Decentralization
1. A decentralized organization stresses delegation of authority and
relieves the top manager’s load.
2. The development of “generalists” rather than specialists is
encouraged.
3. Intimate personal ties and relationships are promoted resulting in
greater employee enthusiasm and coordination.
4. Familiarity with important aspects of special work is readily acquired.
5. Efficiency is increased since the structure can be viewed “as a whole”,
so that trouble spots can be detected and remedied easily and
immediately.
6. For the multi-unit enterprises keyed to geographical dispersion full
advantage of respective local conditions can be obtained.
7. Plans can be tried out on experimental basis in one plant, locality or
area, and modified and proven before being supplied to similar plants
of a company.
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8. Risks involving possible losses of personnel, facilities, and plants are
spread out.
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Philippine Experience on Centralized Administration
One of the survivals of the long colonial days in the Philippines has
been a strong centralized government lodged in the Chief Executive. The
central government is so strong and powerful that many small details of
administration have to be approved by the Department Secretaries in Manila.
The consequences of this strong centralized government have not been
favorable to the growth of civic spirit, civic responsibility, and civic
conscience among the people in the local areas where such a spirit really
begins and reside. Too much centralization kills local and individual
initiatives. No country has become great until its people were encouraged to
use their initiative and resourcefulness to meet their own problems
according to conditions existing locally.
The socio-economic development of most rural areas had been
neglected by a highly centralized government that, as it became increasingly
isolated from the people, it grew less and less responsive to the needs of the
rural populace.
Policies and programs were dictated from the top. No matter how
irrelevant or ill-conceived these programs were, local government officials
raised little, if any, objections.
Deprived of substantial authority to the administration’s continuance in
power, many of these local officials increasingly became dependent on the
national government for direction and ideas.
As a result, the country’s economy quickly deteriorated. Government
failed to deliver even the most basic social services such as quality
education and access to affordable health care to the majority of the
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population. Political leadership at the local government levels became weak
and ineffective.
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The Imperative of Change: From Centralization to
Decentralization
DEVOLUTION: a First Step to Decentralization
Since power and authority are now held at the center, what is the best
way to achieve decentralization? A sudden demolition of the structure
without the necessary preparation would not be only jolting but cataclysmic.
A wild reverse swing of the pendulum would be counter-productive – without
the needed safeguards. The President herself has shown the way, and must
take credit for the development of our communities – the Devolution of
decision-making to the local level. Thus presidential initiative must start a
progressive and irreversible conferring of power and authority to the political
subdivisions.
Actually, devolution was started during the time of President Ramon
Magsaysay when he favored giving local government more autonomy
because he stressed the development of the rural areas. He spurred the
vigorous movement for greater local autonomy. A series of legislative
activities may be recalled to show the tendency to decentralize power:
1. R.A. 1062 -provide more budget autonomy to provincial and municipal
government.
2. R.A. 1205- converted all specially organized provinces to regular
provinces, which means the election of local officials instead of
being appointed by the Chief Executive.
3. R.A. 1551- provides that all municipal employees whose salaries were
paid from the Municipal general funds were to be appointed by the
mayor.
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4. R.A. 2264- known as the local autonomy to municipal government
Autonomy Act.
5. R.A. 2870- known as the Barrio Charter.
6. R.A. 1515- provide for more autonomous government for municipal
districts.
7. R.A. 2368- classified municipalities, provided for the reorganization of
the municipal Councils & increase municipal powers and activities.
The various efforts of provincial executives, city mayors and leaders of
congress culminated in the presentation of the Decentralization Bill in the
regular sessions of Congress in 1964.
Deconcentration/Delocation:
What could be a sincere Presidential intention can be vitiated (or to
make legally ineffective) in implementation. Often, what is passed for
decentralization is more aptly termed as deconcentralization whereby the
central government does not share power simply install in place in special
services closer to the citizenry. Example would include token gestures of
delegation of authority by the national government departments and
agencies to their regional, district or field offices, such as the DPWH
increasing the field officers’ authority to conduct bids by a few hundred
thousand pesos, and the Department of Health or Agriculture providing
extension services in the field. The relationship is administrative in nature
and implies no transfer of final authority from the National to the field level
or diminution of central office powers or responsibilities. Or at most, what is
presented as decentralization in order to dignify it is delocalization which is
marked by a displacement of activities (mostly mere tasks and chores) and
not of powers to local governments. Since it is neither a sharing nor a
transfer of power, the activities delegated can be taken back at any time. An
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example of this just happened over the last few months. The papers had
headlined that city and municipal mayor’s re-assumed control of the police.
A close reading, however, revealed that local officials would only direct,
supervise, oversee and inspect police units, separate or transfer policemen.
One can only exercise control if he can punish or reward. This power being
absent, how can it be said that they now have control?
Real Decentralization is administration by the administered. As a
French author would define it, all powers come from the field or local
communities. Each local government, totally responsible for its own affairs,
delegates power to the next highest level only when and where it is deemed
more efficient to look at the higher unit. These normally include national
defense, foreign affairs, judiciary, and the postal services and the like. What
is not delegated up remains in the field. Thus, bureaucracy in the national
government is kept at the minimum.
The popular will or demand today is Decentralization and Local
autonomy; because it is enshrined in 1987 Constitution. Local autonomy is
nothing else but a decentralized approach to national governance. The
effectiveness of national government developmental programs and projects
largely hinge on the cooperation and role that local governments play in
their implementation. It is therefore, imperative that governmental powers
should be optimally distributed in order to achieve a workable and effective
system of governance. Thomas Jefferson once said that “x x x it is not by the
consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution-that good
government is affected.”
Representatives Felicito C. Payumo of Bataan said that in order that
the program of Decentralization is effective and successful in its
implementation, local officials should be prepared to undergo training in
public administration.
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There should be module for local elective officials, with emphasis on
training public accountability, to include revenue sourcing, prioritization of
use of resources, development of project management capability, and
ecology.
With these knowledge and skills acquired from their training, the local
officials are expected to serve as a catalyst to remedy the malady of graft
and corruption, poor delivery of basic services, misuse of resources,
miscarriage of justice, which in turn, breed poverty, underdevelopment of
rural areas, and unequal or inequitable sharing of the country’s wealth.
The Decentralization of Educational Administration:
Rationale (UNESCO) 20
The major activities involved in the enterprise of education are:
1. The determination of the overall goals of education;
2. The translation of the overall goals, as well as any other more
particularistic goals of education into educational objectives;
3. The formulation of policies to achieve educational objectives;
4. The establishment of institutional and other mechanisms, and physical
facilities, for the delivery of education;
5. The recruitment and training of personnel, for the planning and
management, including delivery, of education;
6. The determination of appropriate curricula, and methods of teaching
and learning;
7.
8. The preparation of teaching and learning materials;
9. The management of learning;
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10. The monitoring, assessment, and review of educational progress
with a view to effecting needed changes in the above-mentioned
components.
All these activities can be carried out on either a centralized or a
decentralized basis.
Decentralization, in the strict sense of the term, should involve the creation
of autonomous authorities, covering relatively small geographical,
administrative or population units, to carry out the functions discharged by a
central authority. Powers which the central authority exercised should be
transferred to the autonomous bodies so created, and the latter should take
action pertaining to their responsibilities and functions o their behalf and as
a matter of legal right, and not as the agents, or representatives of the
central authority. The term ‘decentralization’ is, however, widely used in a
somewhat loose sense than that indicated above to refer to arrangements by
which a central authority delegates all or some of its powers to a number of
duly constituted bodies or individuals, authorizing them to exercise these
powers in the capacity of agents of the central authority. Directives may be
sent down from time to time by the central authority regarding policies or
other matters of importance; also, directions may be sought by the
delegated bodies or individuals from the central authority, where such
directions are deemed to be necessary. In the present module,
decentralization is taken to include both senses in which the term is used.
The country examples given in lesson 3 will clarify the extent to which
educational decentralization conforms to the strict use of the loose use of the
term.
Many countries, which have centralized systems of education, are
moving towards decentralization to some extent or other; certain countries,
which have already decentralized their educational systems to some degree,
are thinking of proceeding further with their efforts at decentralization. The
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more important reasons which seem to be responsible for the increasing
trend towards decentralization are as follows:
1. The magnitude of the educational enterprise;
2. The heterogeneity of the clientele for education;
3. The complexity of the educational system;
4. Public expectations from education;
5. Problems of communication;
6. The financial burden on the central government;
7. The recognition of education as a component of regional development
planning.
Each of them is discussed below: -
1. The magnitude of the educational enterprise
The educational enterprise, the main components of which are
institutions, students, teachers, buildings and other facilities, has in
almost every Third World Country recorded a phenomenal increase,
especially during the past three decades. The magnitude of the increase
can be best seen in student numbers. Let us group the countries of Asia
and the Pacific into six categories:
1.1. countries whose present population exceeds 500 million;
1.2. countries whose present population lies between 100 million and
500 millions;
1.3. countries whose present population lies between 50 million and
100 millions
1.4. countries whose present population lies between 25 million and
50 millions;
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1.5. countries whose present population lies between 10 million and
25 millions;
1.6. countries whose present population lies between one million and
ten millions
Each year’s total enrolment is for the first, second and third
levels of education, according to UNESCO’s usual classification of
levels. These enrolment figures and the percentage increases will
provide an indication of the extent to which student numbers have
increased in various countries. The growth in the student expansion is
undoubtedly of enormous magnitude. The increases in the numbers of
institutions, teachers, buildings and other facilities have undoubtedly
been in proportion to the growth in the student numbers, with the
result that the entire enterprise of education has taken on huge
dimensions, so much so that serious doubts are expressed by
educators as well as by those in public administration as to whether a
centralized administration is really capable of an efficient delivery of
educational services.
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2. The heterogeneity of the clientele for education
Before the decade of the 1950’s when the first increases in numbers
began to make their appearance, not only were the educational systems
small in size, but they also catered to a relatively homogenous clientele,
drawn to a large extent from the economically better off sectors of the
urban population, and the very affluent among the rural people who were
few in number and generally used urban educational facilities for their
children. To say this is not to imply that the urban poor and the not very
rich rural population were completely denied education, but there is no
gainsaying the fact that the provision for them was quite inadequate. The
present clientele of the vastly expended education systems is broader
based, geographically, socially, and economically, but one characteristic
of a centralized education structure is that by and large it tends to give
primacy to the privileged groups which have been its additional concern.
In the process, the vast majority of the student population received less
than a fair share of attention. The curriculum of the elite schools prepared
the small numbers enrolled in them for the learned professions, and for
vocations in which openings were few. Some achieved success, others did
not. But as the failure could fall back on family wealth for their
maintenance or had family property which they could develop, they did
not become a social concern. The same curriculum continued to be
offered even after the elitist system was thrown open to the masses. In
that context, the curriculum ceased to be functional, and the quite large
numbers failing to qualify or get the small number of jobs for which
education fitted them became a serious social concern. Centralized
systems of education have not been able to come up with effective
solutions, and it is felt that the remedy would lie in decentralization.
3. The complexity of the educational system
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Arising partly from the pressures mentioned in 1 and 2 above, the
educational systems of most countries have undergone a structural
transformation during the past two decades or so. The earlier structure
was a simple one consisting of an elementary school, a single tract
secondary school, and a university. A much more complicated structure is
in the process of being developed. Pre-schools are being increasingly
added at the lower end. The single track secondary school is being
replaced either by several secondary schools with diversified curricula or
by a single comprehensive school within which a variety of curricular
offerings is available. Higher education is available not only in universities
but in polytechnics and other specialized institutions. In brief, the simple
structure of formal education has been transformed into a much more
complex one. Then, there is non-formal education which is increasingly
offering a parallel education to the formal system. And finally, the concept
of life-long education has abolished the idea of a terminal point for
education. In short, the educational system has become one of immense
complexity, giving rise to unprecedented managerial problems. It is the
considered view of many educators that unless this gigantic monolithic
structure, as administered centrally, is reduced to reasonable proportions
through a programme of effective decentralization, it would defy all
attempts at management and breakdown.
4. Public expectations from education
As long as the education system was small, the public accepted
education as a worthy end in itself and did not entertain any other
expectations. However, as expenditure on education began to increase
with growth in size of the system, educators were called upon to justify
the expenditure, and they did so on the ground that education was a
catalyst to economic development. The public has now come to demand
hard evidence of the contribution of education to economic development.
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What began as claims and expectations expressed wholly in terms of
economic development have now broadened to include other aspects of
development as well, and the thrust now is on the role that education
should play in national development in all its facets. The public is
justifiably concerned with the existence of educated unemployment,
which is seen as a running sore affecting the entire social system. The
public is also visibly concerned with the lack of relevance, as generally
imparted, of education to local needs, and the failure of education to
contribute to the solution of local problems. Educators are called upon to
meet these challenges, and in their endeavour to do so, they have begun
to question the existing administrative system and to hold it responsible
at least in part for the failure of education to deliver the goods. The hope
is now seriously entertained that the decentralization of education may be
a means of making it more relevant to local needs and also realizing its
potential as a catalyst to national development.
5. Problems of communication
The expansion of a centralized educational system involves a
lengthening of lines of communication, both horizontally and vertically. It
is, however, the latter which get lengthened manifold and are affected
more. Communication becomes time consuming and exasperating.
Communications from the top downward do ultimately reach those at the
bottom with some intervening delay. Moreover, the message itself tends
to get weakened and distorted in the process of transmission down a
lengthy and often tortuous route. It also becomes more impersonal and
less intimate with a consequent loss in its significance and impact.
Communications from the bottom intended to go upwards usually
encounter barriers, as the echelons through whom the communications
are required to be channeled exercise discretionary powers as to whether
the messages should really go up or not, since they run the risk of being
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accused by their superiors for giving them the extra work involved in
receiving the communication or taking action about it. This is in regard to
communication within the system, but in so far as communication outside
the system – to or from parents or the public at large goes – is concerned,
there is much less chance of its being received within a reasonable time,
if it is received at all.
6. The financial burden on the central government
The very heavy demands which education makes on the national
budget, and the prospect of further escalations, have made the ministries
of finance of some countries urge decentralization as a means of relieving
part of the burden now placed on the central government. It holds that
this will generate revenues from education to the regional or local
government, community organizations, and/or parents. It is felt that if
education were decentralized, the responsibility for raising part of the
revenue required for financing educational expenditure could be placed
on the decentralized structure, whatever its particular form may be. It is
also assumes that more active involvement by more social institutions
and groups will lead to an increase in resources available for education.
Aside from any legal transfer of the financial burden to
decentralized educational authorities, it is also anticipated that a
substantial amount of voluntary support could be mobilized from local
communities, if education were decentralized.
7. The recognition of education as a component of regional
development planning
Imbalances in development between different areas, and the are-
wise specificity of development problems and needs have made national
development planners turn their attention to regional development
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planning. Where a country puts regional development planning into
practice, education cannot stand outside but has to become an integral
component of the strategies of regional development, which have of
necessity to be carried out on a decentralized basis. Consequently, it may
be stated that the trends towards regional development planning that are
becoming increasingly popular in some countries are forcing the hands of
educators to take action towards the decentralization of education.
Conclusion
Seven reasons for the trend towards the decentralization of education
have been outlined above. A word of caution should be expressed that it
would be unwise to think that the path of decentralization is strewn with
roses or that decentralization is a panacea for all the ills with which
education is now beset. It would be far wiser to think of decentralization as a
necessary, but not sufficient, condition for meeting some of the challenges
faced by education. Decentralization has its own set of problems, and some
of them are considered to be institutional level, district level, division and up
to the regional level.
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Test and Apply Your Knowledge
1. What reasons, other than those given in this lesson, can you adduce
for the trend towards decentralization?
2. State, with reasons, whether you advocate the decentralization of
education in your country/region/division/district/institution.
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Lesson 2Institution Building and Institutional Development
Objectives:
The objectives of this lesson are to provide information about
institution building and development for organization’s renewal and
upgrading; and to be aware of the structural and process mechanism for
resources and support systems management.
Introduction
It is important that educational organizations continuously grow and
develop themselves to suit the changing environment as well as to bring
about change in the environment. To do this requires good degree of self-
renewal capabilities to be built into the design and culture of the educational
organizations. The experiences in most of the countries indicate educational
organizations function well in the initial period and start stagnating after
some time. Recent advances and experiences in Management Sciences have
indicated that it is possible to design and re-design organization to maintain
and improve self-renewing capabilities. ‘Institution-Building’ (IB) and
‘Organization Development’ (popularly known as OD) are two such
movements that have demonstrated good results in helping organizations
renew themselves. This module is devoted to familiarize the reader with
some of these concepts and includes the following sections:
1. The concept of Institution Building
2. Structural and process mechanisms for Institution Building
3. Supervision: The Basic Management System
4. Developing and managing the faculty
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5. Creating and managing institutional resources and support
systems
6. Towards self-renewal of institutions
The first section explains the concept of IB. The second section deals
with structural and process mechanism for IB. The third section examines the
issue developing participative culture which forms a back bone for any IB or
OD activities. The fourth section is devoted to the important area of ‘Faculty
Development’ which is crucial for any educational Institution to play its
change agentry role well. The fifth section spells out briefly the mechanisms
of creating and managing institutional resources and support systems. The
sixth section delineates the use of OD for self-renewal of institutions. Various
OD techniques are also discussed.
There are two case studies presented at the end of this module. The
first case deals with the creation and location of resources in a community
and the second case study describes a self-renewal (OD) effort carried out in
a school system.
1. The concept of Institution Building
An institution is concerned both with its internal development as well
as with external linkages, including making impact on a larger part of the
society. An institution has been defined as an organization which embodies,
fosters, and protects normative relationships and action patterns, and
performs functions and services which are valued in the environment. An
institution has the responsibility of influencing the environment. The term
‘institution building’ has been used both for the process of internal
development of an institution as well as for making external impact on the
society. Institution building has been defined as the process of establishing
or transforming and organization into an integrated and organic part of a
community, in a way that will help the organization play a proactive role in
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projecting new values and become an agent of change in the community
(Pareek, 1981). The management of an institution has to pay attention to
both these aspects of institution building.
The main function of management is to make institutions more
effective. Effectiveness of institutions can be conceived in terms of five main
aspects; achievement of goals, development of people, expansion, self-
renewal, and making impact on a larger community. Each institution has
defined goals, and the management ensures that these goals are achieved
most speedily and with minimum inputs. The goals may relate to providing
education, doing research, preparing policies and strategies, evaluation
programmes, supporting various projects, etc. Most of such goals can be
measured quantitatively. Criteria can be evolved to test to what extent the
goals have been achieved and with how much input of various kinds.
Management should ensure both the qualitative aspects of achievement of
goals as well as efficiency in terms of input-output ratio.
In addition to the achievement of the goals and institution needs to
pay attention to the development of its own people, working in different roles
and at various levels. An educational institute particularly has to look after
this important dimension. Development of people may involve both their
continuous professional growth as well as undertaking new and higher
responsibilities.
An institution is also concerned with its own growth. Every institute is
interested in its scope of work and expanding its activities. Even if the
institute continues to serve a particular community, it needs to add new
functions so that the people may have a sense of development and growth.
One aspect which is often neglected is that of self-renewal. An institute
needs to examine its processes of growth and possible decline and take
steps so that a phase of decline may be averted and changed into one of
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continuous development. The process of self-renewal is important for
institutions working in developing countries.
Finally, an institution by definition is an organization which has the
responsibility of influencing a larger section of the society on some values
and norms. This aspect has recently attracted attention and has been
termed as institution building. The linkages between institutions and the
society have to be made stronger. Thus management has several functions
to perform in an institution.
The Focus of Management: PEG
The effectiveness of institutions will depend to a great extent on how it
is able to develop its own culture and traditions to meet various challenges
and achieves results related to the five different aspects enumerated above.
We suggest that the primary focus of management in an institution may be
to create an orientation of pride, enjoyment and growth (PEG) amongst
various personnel in the institute. If people are engaged in work which they
find challenging and worthwhile (being relevant to social needs and critical to
social development) they feel proud to be associated with such work. One
function of management may be to create such a sense of challenge and
worthwhileness in the work people are engaged in. Similarly, work should be
regarded as a joy, and not drudgery. If people determine their own
objectives, experience that what they do is seen as significant by concerned
people, and have an opportunity to work in collaboration on difficult but
significant tasks, they enjoy work. The feeling of growth comes when the
work becomes increasingly more challenging and socially relevant, and
people are required to stretch themselves to cope with such positive
challenges. When people have opportunities to learn new techniques,
acquire new skills, and revise their previous understanding, they may
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experience growth. If work ceases to give a sense of growth and
development, the individual’s commitment to work goes down. We therefore
strongly suggest that the main focus of management in an institution should
be to produce enough challenge, social relevance, autonomy, opportunities
for learning and meeting challenges, and opportunities to jointly work on
challenging tasks. The effectiveness of management of institutions may be
evaluated in terms of the extent to which people feel proud and involved in
their jobs and experience a sense of growth.
MODULE 3
Concepts and
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Process in EducationalAdministration and
Supervision
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Overview
Module 3 deals with concepts and processes in Educational Administration
and Supervision. It consists of three (3) lessons, namely:
Lesson 1 – Concepts of Educational Administration and Supervision
Lesson 2 – Functions and Principles of School Administration and
Supervision
Lesson 3 – New Dimensions in supervision
Lesson 4 – Roles of School Supervisor
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Lesson 1Concepts of Educational Administration and Supervision
Objectives
The objectives of this module are to develop a valid concept of the
meaning of educational administration, supervision and scientific
management; to distinguish its various types; and to understand the
traditional and modern concepts of school administration.
Administration and Supervision Defined
Administration should not be confused with the supervision they are
not synonymous terms. Each has an important role in achieving educational
aims and objectives.
The word administration connotes the machinery of an organization
and its functions. It refers to the plan, direction, control, and operation of
the school system to achieve the desired aims and objectives. It is a service
activity, a tool by which the objectives of education maybe fully and
efficiently realized. School Administration should consider the pupils, and its
efficiency must be measured by the extent to which it contributes to the
teaching and learning. It can contribute immensely by providing efficient
teachers, physical plan and facilities, and adequate tools and environment
for work. It covers (1) the teaching staff, (2) school finance, (3) curriculum
development, (4) school plant and equipment, (5) guidance, and (6)
discipline. School administration is concerned, not only with organization
and procedure, but also with the process by which practices are adapted and
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instituted. The administrator is responsible for expediting a process which
brings all the persons with legitimate interests in a program.
For purposes of administration, Barr, Burton, and Brueckner (22.1947)
give, as types of school organization, the following: extrinsic-dualistic and
the line-and-staff. Both belong to the traditional or authoritarian
organization. In the extrinsic-dualistic type of organization there is no
centralization of authority, no definition of lines, no mechanism for
cooperation. On the other hand, in the line-and-staff organization the
authority is placed on the line officers or administrators who issue orders.
The staff officers or supervisors supply advice, information, and technical
assistance to line officers. In a line-and-staff school organization, leadership
is simply an expression of two principles namely: (1) the principle of
authority; and (2) the principle of obedience to properly constituted
authority. The keynote of this system is efficiency in meeting a socially
assigned obligation of a democratically established institution. The school
administrator considers the execution of policies as distinct and separate
from the formulation of policies. The execution of policies as distinct and
separate from the formulation. In a line-and-staff school organization the
officer’s final authority is actually derived from the power under the law.
Areas of authority and responsibility are assigned to line officers who have a
measure of executive authority Hopkin’s (23.1941) divided the conceptions
of school administration into three groups: (1) the laissez-faire, (2) the
authoritarian, and (3) the democratic. In the laissez-faire conception of
administration, individual schools represent supreme authorities and function
with little reference to any central unifying organization. In other words,
there is no operating unity from which and through which the individual
schools can obtain helpful leadership in improving their educational program.
In the authoritarian conception of administration, efficiency of operation is
the primary goal. The responsibility of education is centered by law in the
chief executive who assumes the responsibility of formulating and executing
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educational policies. The policies formulated by the chief executive are
transmitted through the line to the individuals who are to execute them. The
final authority and responsibility are reviewed from time to time. When
disagreement, question, or conflict arises, the line officer on the next higher
level makes the decision. The democratic conception of administration is
based on the principle of cooperation in which everyone participates on the
extent of his ability. This conception is based on the belief that those who
must abide by policies shall participate in formulating them. All matters that
concern the group are referred to the group. In a democratic school
organization the administrator’s position of leadership is derived from the
authority but out of the group discussion and deliberation. In other words,
authority is derived by persons from the situation and is shared by all who
participate in the planning. Final responsibility, as well as the individual, is
held responsible for its actions. Effective responsibility becomes possible
only through an optimum level of participation which is the requisite of
freedom.
Supervision ordinarily implies to the improvement of the teaching-
learning situations and the conditions that affect them. In the past,
supervision had many meanings. In the early years in this country,
supervision consisted solely of inspection of some school officials of the
community for the purpose of noting the condition and use of school
facilities. There was a little or no specific and direct concern for the pupils or
the teacher. Today all individuals connected with schools and school
programs would not hesitate to state that such an inspection is not
supervision in any sense of the word.
For a modern definition of supervision, Barr, Burton, and Brueckner
(24.1947) have this to say; “Supervision is an expert technical service
primarily concerned with studying and improving conditions that surround
learning and pupils’ growth.” This definition implies leadership on the part of
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the supervisor. To Melchor (25.1950), The words “Supervisor,”
“supervision,” and “supervisory program” relate to the instructional phases
of school plan and activities. According to Crow and Crow (26.1947), “to
supervise is to criticize, to evaluate, to appraise, or to praise.” Supervision
may also be defined as a process of bringing about the improvement of
instruction by working with people who are working with pupils. It is a
process of stimulating growth as a means of helping teachings to help
themselves. Adequate supervision is concerned with making adequate
provision for all the conditions which surround the learning of the pupils and
the teachers. Supervision can also be defined in terms of functions or
purpose for which it is used, purposes which lend meaning to the techniques
employed. From the major division of his textbook, Wiles, (27.1951)
discusses supervision as: (1) skill in leadership, (2) skills in human relations,
(3) skill in group process, (4) skill in personnel administration, and (5) skill in
evaluation. From these definitions we can definitely conclude that
supervision refers to the process of coordinating group activity in such a way
as to attain desirable goals. It can also be said that the fundamental purpose
of any supervisory activity is toward whatever improvement in the attitude of
the supervised may be considered desirable in terms of groups accepted
standard. Teachers and pupils do the actual work, but the supervisor is
expected to assist them through suggestions and advice, and through the
kind of leadership that inspires them toward improvement, growth or
development. It can be said, therefore, that supervision emphasizes the
professional growth and stimulation of teachers, the development of
cooperative planning, and the exercise of professional leadership in school
improvement. Thus, supervision has become a program of in-service
education and cooperative group development.
The modern concept of democratic supervision is expressed by Barr,
Burton, and Bruecker (1947) in the following statement:
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“Supervision is leadership and the development of leadership within groups which are cooperatively evaluating the educational product in the light of accepted educational objectives; studying the teaching-learning situation to determine the antecedents of the satisfactory pupils’ growth and achievement; improving teaching-learning situation; evaluating the objectives, methods’ and outcomes of supervision.”
The purpose of modern supervision, therefore, is to supply the
leadership which will help the staff members improve the instructional
situation; and in doing that, to grow professionally themselves. Instead of
showing or telling the teachers how to do their jobs better, the supervisor or
principal works with them in the study and analysis of the total teaching-
learning situation in order to improve it. In other words, the purpose the
supervision is to improve instruction through the direction, guidance, and
training of teachers. This view implies that instruction may be improved and
that teaching efficiency may be increased. In other words, improved
teaching will improve learning. Under these conditions, one authority
(29.1950) has noted that “the improvement of teachers is not so much a
supervisory function in which teachers participate as it is a teacher’s function
in which teachers participate as it is a teacher’s function in which supervisors
cooperate.”
In business and industry it is an accepted principle that supervision
aims to improve the quality and quantity of production. In education, the
purpose of supervision is to stimulate teachers and pupils toward the
utilization of better teaching-learning procedures. The entire supervisory
activity should be directed, therefore, toward the improvement of the total
teaching-learning process and the total setting for learning. Supervision
covers (1) the formulation of the aims, objectives, and purposes to be
achieved, (2) the selection and organization of the subject matters to be
taught, (3) the placement of the teachers who will teach them, (4) the
selection of methods and techniques by which the subject matter is taught,
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and (5) the evaluation of the growth of the child and the improvement of the
teacher.
Barr, Burton, and Brueckner (30,1947) identified four excellent types of
supervision namely: laissez-faire, coercive, training and guidance, and
democratic leadership. The laissez-faire type of supervision uses inspectorial
supervisory methods unaided by any objective control, in which the teachers
are observed. But nothing is done to help them improve the work they are
doing. In other words, teachers are left free; they are neither imposed upon
nor directed. The supervisor observes the teacher but does nothing to
improve the teaching. The coercive type of supervision is the opposite of the
laissez-faire type; the principal visits the teacher in order to observe them.
The teachers are required to follow the ready-made procedures or standards
prescribed by the principal, supervisor, or superintendent. In the training
and guidance type of supervision, emphasis is placed upon the improvement
of the teacher, as well as of his technique through direction, guidance, and
training. The democratic leadership type of supervision enlists the teacher’s
cooperation in the formulation of policies, plans, and procedures. In this type
of supervision the supervisor observes, with the aim to improve the
teaching-learning situation, through cooperative process. The teachers, the
principals, supervisors, and the superintendent are regarded as co-workers in
a common task. All these types of supervision are practiced in our school
system.
Ayer, (31.1954) gives the following types of supervision: (1)
authoritative supervision, (2) creative supervision, (3) organismic
supervision, (4) democratic supervision, and (5) scientific supervision.
Authoritative Supervision refers to supervision that is carried on with some
degree of administrative authority. This type of supervision is based on a
standard program of instruction carried on through guidance and direction.
Creative supervision is based on the idea that supervision is an originating
enterprise which aims to provide an environment an environment in which
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teachers of high professional ideals may live a wholesome and creative life,
and to promote the potential powers of creativeness in pupils. Organismic
supervision promotes the idea that the child develops as an organic whole;
hence teaching and supervision should emphasize the unifying process and
integrated outcome of instruction. In this type of supervision emphasis is
placed upon the whole child, correlated subject matter, and integrated
outcomes. Democratic supervision is based on the concept of planning,
leadership, conduct, and evaluation of instructional improvement should be
shared by the teaching personnel. Scientific supervision based upon
measurable and controllable items. This type of supervision makes use of
the scientific principles that the solution of a problem should be based on
facts.
Relationship between Administration and Supervision:
The Educational Act No. 74 of the Philippine Commission failed to draw
a demarcation line between school administration and supervision.
According to this Educational Act, “every administrator is a supervisor
participates in administrative affair,” In the Philippine school system,
therefore, administration and supervision supplement and complement each
other. They are both complementary and supplementary functions of our
school system.
From the preceding definitions of administration and supervision, one
can conclude that the two terms are interrelated. Effective learning, which is
the fundamental aim of supervision, cannot be accomplished under
inefficient administration. It generally accepted that proper administration is
one of the great factors to learning. The procedure or technique used by the
administrator in determining the purpose of administration and the way it is
to be effected becomes part of the learning process for everyone affected
just as truly as methods of teaching in a classroom are a help to the learning
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of the pupils. Administration is intended solely to facilitate instruction;
instruction must be so administered as to make it efficient and effective.
The way the school plant is operated, the manner teachers are selected and
assigned, the methods of preparing a school budget, the attitudes of
administrators toward the problems of children, the requirements for
promotion from year to year – all these aspects of school administration
become part of the ways of learning of all human beings connected with the
system. The purpose of school administration, then, is to bring all phases of
the total school enterprise into a harmonious working relationship around
some central conception of unity inherent in the process to be desired in
learning. Since administration is a means to learning which is the goal of
supervision, it must exemplify in its practices those democratic, interactive,
integrating processes basic to the successful functioning of the total school
enterprise.
Administration has a leading role in education and can serve as a
powerful, constructive influence if it is centered on the ways and means of
attaining the purposes of the educational program. Rorer (22.1942) in his
remarkable analysis of the principles governing supervision believes that
administration and supervision should be differentiated in their function of
leadership. Administration requires more than mere knowledge of
management or keeping the machinery operating smoothly. It demands a
continuous study of goals to see how they can be best attained, and a
constant appraisal and analysis of physical facilities, tools, equipment,
materials, and personnel to determine how all these means can be utilized to
utmost advantage. Administration requires specialized ability and a
thorough-going knowledge of the science of administration, just as the
planning and direction of the learning activities of boys and girls require
specialized abilities on the part of the teachers.
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Supervision also plays major role in creating atmosphere in the school
system stimulating to the growth of more admirable qualities among the
personnel of the teaching staff. It is no longer regarded as a mere inspection
of the work of the teachers, but as a form of democratic leadership – a
clearing house of the best ideas of the work in the field. It is within the
scope of supervision to stimulate and inspire the teachers to do creative
work and to encourage them to grow professionally.
Ever since supervision was added to school management, there has
been a concerted attempt to draw a line of demarcation between
administration and supervision, between the job of administering and that of
supervising. This campaign for strict interpretation is still far short of its
goal, especially in a highly centralized school system.
Through administration and supervision are interrelated, differences in
positions between the two can be briefly described as follows:
1. Administration represents the whole of the educational system,
while supervision represents a portion of it that is related to the
improvement of the teaching-learning situation.
2. Administration emphasizes authority, and service in case of
supervision. Every act of the administrator is based upon authority,
while supervision is based upon service. Administration, for the
most part, reflects more authority than supervision.
3. Administration provides favorable conditions essential to good
teaching and learning, and supervision carries out the better
operation and improving of it.
4. Administration decides, directs, and orders execution of the
educational program, while supervision assists, advises, guides and
leads the operation and improving of the program. In other words,
administration directs and supervision serves.
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Likewise, Rorer – expresses the relationship between administration
and supervision in terms of the following principles:
1. Supervision is a function of administration and subordinate to the
former.
2. Supervision and administration are two separate and distinct
functions.
3. Supervision and administration are correlative, coordinate, and
complementary functions of education.
Scope of School Administration and Supervision
In order to have a clear conception of the scope of the scope of school
administration and supervision, we may present here examples of
administrative and supervisory activities. We have to determine the
activities rightfully belonging to administration and supervision as limited by
their respective definitions. Edmonson, Roemer, and Bacon (1948) give the
following as a summary statement of the activities rightfully falling under
administration.
1. The Selection of the Teaching Staff
2. The Organization of the Administrative and Teaching Staff
3. Department Organization
4. The Present Need for the Improving Physical Facilities, Site,
Grounds, and Size of Building
5. Space Devoted for the Administration of Facilities
6. Space Devoted to Instruction, for Services, and Equipment
7. Increasing Office Efficiency
8. System Records and Reports
9. Office Rotation and Personnel
10. Widening Participation in Planning the Budget
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11. Accounting Procedures
12. Accounting of Supply and Equipment
13. Making Schedules
14. Importance and Functions of Discipline
15. Guidance Program
16. School Assembly
17. Student Organization and Activities – Clubs, Dramatics,
Publications, Handwork
18. The Curriculum
19. Selection of Instructional Materials
20. The School Library
21. Appraising and Reporting Progress of Students
22. The Public Relations Program
23. Secondary Schools and College Relations
24. Faculty Meeting
Barr, Burton, Brueckner (1938) give the following as a summary statement of the activities belonging to supervision:
1. Survey of the School System
2. The Direct Improvement of Classroom Teaching
3. The General Improvement of Teachers-in-Service
4. Organizing Programs of Cooperative Activity
5. The Development and Maintenance of Morale, or Esprit de Corps
6. The Selection and Organization of the Materials of Instruction
7. Experimental Study of the Problems of Teaching
8. Determining the Desirable Physical Conditions of Learning
9. Performance of Professional and Semi-Administrative Duties
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Author Gist (33.1951) gives the techniques of supervision under the following headings:
1. Teacher Diagnosis
2. Pupil Diagnosis
3. Diagnosis of Curricular Offerings
4. Survey of Methods in Instruction
5. Budgeting of Time in Supervision
6. Classroom Visitation
7. Teacher’s Meeting and Conference
8. Demonstration Teaching
9. Professional Growth
10. Teacher-Pupil Relationship
11. Evaluation of Supervision
The Traditional and Modern Concepts of Administration and Supervision
To have a vivid picture of the modern trend in school administration
and supervision, it is necessary to discuss briefly its traditional concept. The
traditional concept of administration and supervision is based on the
philosophy that the teacher is the center of the administration and
supervisory activities. The old concept puts more emphasis upon imposed
improvement of the teachers through teacher-training and rigid discipline.
Traditional administration and supervision place more emphasis upon
techniques and the use of subjective devices and autocratic procedures. The
traditional concept of school administration and supervision practices
leadership through compulsion, coercion, and imposition or through pressure
in the use of ready-made solutions or procedures. Traditional administrators
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and supervisors consider themselves as experts and work outside of the
group under their control and supervision. They also regard classroom
visitation as isolated from other school activities and projects.
Early in the history of school administration and supervision,
operations were largely in a personal and practical basis. Men were
selected, not because of their special technical training, but rather because
of their success in dealing with the public, the teachers and the students.
The conception of administration and supervision during the period reflected
the existing practices in business and industry whereby the manager, with
the approval of the board of directors, determined the policy and directed
the operation of the company and the work of its employees. The
inadequacy of the traditional concept of administration and supervision in
reference to education was gradually recognized.
The modern concept of school administration and supervision, on the
other hand, recognizes the child and his growth and development as the
center of administrative and supervisory activities. In other words, the
concept of administration and supervision has gradually moved from the
improvement of instruction to the improvement of the learning process.
Modern administration and supervision see education as a whole – all factors,
principles and techniques in improving the teaching-learning situation.
The modern concept of school administration and supervision is more
than mere inspection of the work of the teachers; it is a friendly help and
counsel – a clearing house of the best ideas acquired in the field. Instead of
directing attention solely to the improvement of individual teachers, it enlists
the cooperative efforts of the entire staff in the study of the educational
problems of the school.
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The most recent special concept of school administration and
supervision treats it from the point of view of human relations. The change
from individual improvement to group improvement through cooperative
efforts has also changed the relationships of the educational personnel. This
change is the result of enlightened understanding of democracy and
increased knowledge of psychology as is apparent even in the titles of
positions. This change in the concept of positions has created psychological
insecurities in the administrator or supervisor himself and blocks his
relationship with teachers. Both the administrators and the supervisors no
longer direct or guide but rather suggest changes, provide materials and
resources to the teachers. Administrators and supervisors now are more
frequently called consultant role of the administrator and supervisor. But
unless this consultant role of the administrator and supervisor is properly
supported by the executive school officials, it is ineffective and even
threatening to the teacher. This change in personnel relationships is the
result of an enlightened understanding of democracy as a way of life. The
modern concept of school administration and supervision must be based on
human dignity and human worth and must give priority to human factor.
The traditional and modern concepts of school administration and
supervision can be summarized as follows:
1. The traditional concept of school administration and supervision is
based on the philosophy that the teacher is the center of
administrative and supervisory activities, while the modern concept
recognizes the child and its growth.
2. The traditional concept of school administration and supervision is
subjective, while the modern concept is more objective and
scientific. Modern administration and supervision are based on
facts and utilize scientific and modern devices and procedures.
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3. The traditional concept of school administration and supervision is
individualistic and regimented, while the modern concept is
socialistic or cooperative. In the traditional concept, administrators
and supervisors are considered as experts who know nothing
wrong.
4. The traditional concept of school administration and supervision
puts more emphasis on techniques, while the modern concept is
based on principles. While both techniques and principles are
necessary, principles are fundamental and serve as the basis of
techniques.
5. The traditional concept of school administration and supervision
practices leadership through compulsion, coercion, and imposition,
while modern administration and supervision practices democratic
leadership through stimulation, direction and guidance.
6. The traditional concept of school administration and supervision
regards classroom visitation as isolated activity from other projects,
while under the new concept it covers the whole teaching-learning
factors which are resident in the pupils, in the teachers, in the
administrators and supervisors, and in the school environment.
The Development of Concepts in School Administration and Supervision in the Philippines
The history of school administration and supervision reveals that the
role of the administrator and supervisor changes in accordance with the
needs and available knowledge and conditions of the times. The concept of
school administration and supervision has undergone changes in the
Philippines as to the functions and philosophy controlling administration in
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general and supervision in particular. In the early days, administration and
supervision were inspectorial in character, and the methods used were
dictatorial and coercive. They inspected the buildings and grounds and
equipment. They even checked the attendance and enrollment of the pupils.
Later on, emphasis was placed on the improvement of the curriculum and
the improvement of instruction through the training and guidance of the
teachers.
At present, administration and supervision are conceived as “an expert
technical service primarily concerned with studying, improving, and
evaluating teaching-learning situations, and the conditions that affect them.”
It becomes synonymous with democratic leadership which stresses the
dignity and worth of the individual, promotes the general welfare, and
proceeds through the method of intelligence through cooperative action.
With the placing of emphasis on democratic and creative supervisory
procedures and better understanding of the new concept of administration
and supervision as the improvement of the total teaching-learning situation,
the relationships between administrators, supervisors, and teachers
improved. Thus, the administrators and supervisors assumed an additional
role, that of consultants.
The development of the concepts of administration and supervision in
this country is presented below.
Scientific Management
Up to the early 1900s, work was organized in a haphazard fashion.
The supervisor gave elementary instructions to the worker on what was to be
done. The “how” and “how much” were largely determined by the worker,
Frederick Taylor changes all this.
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While Taylor was progressing from factory worker to operating
manager at a steel plant, he earned an engineering degree by attending
night school. His work experience, education, and sharp powers of
observation combined to give him keen insights into the efficiencies and
shortcomings of how management functioned.
Taylor was bothered by the conditions that he found in the factories.
“Soldiering’ – that is, workers restricting their output –was commonplace. He
saw that workers were selected in a haphazard manner and given no formal
job training. The same was true of management. They were expected to
learn their duties through on-the-job experience of trial and error. Workers,
not management, established the work methods and performance standards.
These conditions resulted in an inefficient factory with little cooperation
between management and labor.
Taylor believed that these conditions could be changed and both
parties would benefit. Soldiering could be overcome if workers understood
the production rates were based on facts and not set arbitrarily. If
management did the job of planning, then workers could concentrate on
doing the work. Rule-of-thumb management would be replaced by scientific
management.
Taylor took the position that there is always one best method and one
best tool to do the job. It is up to management to determine this through
scientific study and analysis. Taking the concept further, Taylor set forth the
following principles of scientific management (see table 2.1 also).
1. Determine the basic element of every job. This would include the
rules of motion and time, standardizing the work tools, and
providing proper working conditions.
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2. Select the workers with the right abilities and train them for their
tasks.
3. Cooperate with the workers so that they do the work together with
management in line with the principles that have been developed.
4. Provide for a division of labor that has the management doing the
thinking and planning and the worker performing the labor.
As Taylor said, “It is no single element, but rather this whole
combination, that constitutes scientific management, which may be
summarized as follows:
Science, not Rule-of-the-thumb.
Harmony, not discord.
Cooperation, not individualism.
Maximum output, in place of restricted output.
The development of each man to his greatest efficiency and prosperity.
Specialization also allows workers to gain greater efficiency because it
is easier to master simple and repetitive tasks. Likewise, supervision is
made easier. Supervisors can easily spot when the worker is not performing.
Finally, individual task can be meshed with one another and with machines.
These give a steadier and more efficient use of people and equipment.
The logic of scientific management is overwhelming. It is no wonder
that it is embraced by management everywhere. Scientific management has
evolved and endured. Today its disciples are found everywhere. All one has
to do is to look at our banks, hospitals, or fast-food restaurants to see
modern evidence of the work principles as set down by Taylor (see table 3)
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Table 3 Scientific Management – 1990s
Standardization of tools and methods.Division of labor: breakdown jobs into small tasks.Specialization: let employees do simple and repetitive
tasks; management does the thinking employees
Second Thoughts on Scientific Management
he shall be so stupid and phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental makeup the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work o this character. Therefore, the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work … and he must consequently be trained by a man more intelligent than him the habit of working in accordance with the laws of this science before he can be successful.
Management believed that by offering workers adequate pay, they
would be willing to accept the way work was structured. The workers’
economic insecurity would keep them inline. But, are the workers staying in
line? Are we not now seeing some evidence of performance decline in the
workplace and can some of this attributed to the principles and assumptions
of scientific management?
American industries experienced quality, cost, and productivity
problems in the 1970s and 1980s. Further, competition was tougher,
especially from the Japanese. In the public’s mind, the Japanese seemed to
be on the right track. They had the product quality. They had motivated
work force. Why? What social science research and the Japanese
experience seemed to be pointing to is that conditions have changed and our
assumptions have to be updated.
Scientific Management by itself may not be enough to get job done
today. It may be that the average worker needs more than a well-
engineered small task to perform. The principles of scientific management
do not need to be abandoned. Rather, we need to take what is useful from
that philosophy and merge it with what are the appropriate present-day
circumstances and the developments along with our history that helps to
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round out our understanding of the environment in which the supervisor
must function.
To help the supervisor to function effectively, we can build on this
history by, first, recognizing the number of pressures pushing and pulling on
supervisors (how well supervisors respond affects their chances of success)
and, second, reviewing the major trends and developments taking place in
society (our world is changing, and unless we realized the significance of
these changes, we will not be prepared to deal with the new circumstances.)
PRESENT-DAY CIRCUMSTANCES
Management Pressures
MANAGEMENT CONTROLS AND SEEKS CONFORMITY. Let us consider
what we mean by management pressures. An effective organization cannot
allow conditions to exist that are not in harmony with the overall plan of the
company. Because of this, management exerts pressures to control all the
individual elements of its business. These controls take many forms –
product specifications, schedules, quality levels, performance standards,
work rules, and wage and salary policies, to name a few.
Effective controls help to assure that there will be predictable behavior
and successful results. Profit objectives are met in large part because the
product or service is delivered as designed. Take a simple item such as a
fast-food hamburger. The product specifications call for two pickle slices
would improve the product, one small pickle slice is not important. However,
to the corporation that sells millions of hamburgers a year, it could be
significant extra cost and have considerable impact on profitability.
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An extra item, an upgraded component, or extra services such as
unauthorized “product improvement” could wreck the profitability of a
company even though the product would have a longer life, better taste,
more functions, or improved appearance. If it had all these features, it
probably could not be priced competitively, and it would be undersold in the
marketplace.
On the other hand, management does not want the customer
shortchanged, It would not want employees to leave out all pickles or
cheapen the product in any way. The trick is to deliver the product or
service as specified – no more no less. This idea carries through to
maintaining a schedule, worker-hours required to do the job, and all the
other control elements used.
What is controlled and how it is controlled will reflect the strength of
management’s feeling toward these items. Top management values profits,
quality, customers, and its employees. But, does it value some of these over
the others, and if so, which are the most valued?
For example, supervisors read in a policy book or hear in a training
session that “people are our most important asset.” What does this really
mean? The company may really be saying that “productive people who are
committed to the company are our most important asset.” Appreciation of
this value hierarchy is of great help to supervisors when they are functioning
as members of the management of the organization.
As you can see, understanding the real intent of management is not
always easy. Remember, top management determines the policies and
priorities of the company and tries to keep these up to date. But
circumstances change (see Table 4), and this may cause the company to
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shift directions. A new product is rushed to the market. A fading product
gets dropped or new ways of operating.
These shifts are not always communicated to everyone on a timely
basis. Too many levels of management can slow or distort any directives.
Sometimes it is assumed that everyone got the “word.” Unfortunately,
supervisions are usually farthest from top management, yet they are
expected to carry out its wishes precisely. Perhaps the best way to “read”
the company is by observing what the organizations actually do. Just as we
can tell much about individuals by observing their actions, we can also learn
a great deal about organizations by observing their actions.
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Table 4 Trends and Developments Affecting Supervisors
Employees want a say on what affects them in the job.The government is more involved in workplace issues.Unions are losing their influence.More women have joined the work force.More part-time employee exists.
Employee Pressures
Just as supervisors experience pressures from management, they also
experience pressures from employees. Part of the transition process
includes learning how to cope with these pressures. Employees are isolated
from the decision makers in the organization. Their contact with the powers
that be is through supervisors. For the most part, supervisors are their only
real contact and hope for an airing of their concerns.
It is natural that supervisors will get pressures from the workers. If
they can influence the supervisor, there is hope that their concerns will get
heard and perhaps resolved. Supervisors will hear “I need more money.”
The production rates are too high.” We could do better work if we had
decent tools and materials.” “Why can’t we do it my way?” and “Why won’t
you do this for us?”
Some of the requests are legitimate; others are frivolous. Still, the
employers want answers and action – fast. What the workers are seeking is
justice and dignity in the workplace, meaningful participation on decisions
that affect them, protection from unfairness from the boos and from unsafe
conditions in the workplace – in other words, a chance to be heard and to be
treated with respect. As we will see later in the book, failure to listen and
respond to employee concerns is the primary cause of grievances and
unionization.
It will fall to supervisors to fulfill the role of the person in the middle,
the buffer between the workers and management. However, supervisors
must realize that they cannot solve all the problems of the employees. Many
employee concerns cannot be solved. A change made to satisfy one
employee may distress another worker. What is too cold for one person may
be the correct temperature for another individual, and so on.
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Supervisors need to make two important distinctions: (1) to distinguish
between legitimate concerns and concerns that are designed to exploit or
gain an unfair advantage and (2) to distinguish between items over which
they have little or no control and those over which they do have some
control.
It is doubtful that supervisors can effect improvements in the pension
plan, add more holidays, or change the production rates. Supervisors can,
however, see the training and development of the employee, maintain safe
and clean working conditions, and treat each individual with respect.
Employees have concerns that only supervisors can handle. This
means that effective supervisors are in touch with the employees. They
listen and look for problem areas, separate the real from the imagined
slights, and respond appropriately. Supervisors realize the need to
communicate upward to management. They filter but do not block upward
communications. It is okay to filter out the frivolous complaint or suggestion.
It is also helpful, even necessary, to management that concerns get forward
so top management knows what employees are feeling. Of course, do not
allow employees to use you. When they are offbase, let them know it. By
dealing directly with factors under your control, you will have a proper
orientation to these various pressures.
Outside Pressures
GOVERNMENT. Besides being influenced by pressures from
management and employees, a number of other pressures come to bear on
supervisors. One of these forces is the government. It is a strong and
sometimes unpopular third party to the supervisor-employee relationship. It
makes the company do things that may seem unreasonable, it causes
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inefficiencies, and it adds to costs. It makes supervisors function as police to
ensure that employees obey the regulations. The government places the
burden on management and not on the workers for obeying the laws. If
workers make mistakes, the penalties fall heavily on management.
The workers are not as accountable for their actions as management
is. Workers also resist any restrictions that are placed on them. Employees
wish to work free of any limitations, yet the government compels them to
follow certain regulations or procedures. Popular or not, the government has
an increasingly important part to play. It has a stake in the employment
process.
Non discrimination is the law. The government also has a stake in pay
practices. Workers must receive the minimum wage for their job and
overtime when applicable. Equal pay is called for when and women and
minorities do essentially the same work.
Safety and health hazards are also of concern. The government
requires a workplace free of known and recognized hazards. Providing and
requiring safety glasses or machine guards for certain jobs add expense and
may even slow production. Workers may say that the glasses give them a
headache and obstruct their vision. The safety devices may interfere with
their productivity and they would rather be free of these restraints. The
compelling argument is put forth, “Besides I have never had a job injury in all
the years I have been working.”
Supervisors are positioned between a requirement to enforce the laws
and workers and management who resent and resist complying. Although
there are conflicting interests, the supervisor’s course of action is clear.
Obey the law even though it is often unpopular and an uphill struggle.
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UNIONS. Another force acting on supervisors is the union. If the
organization is unionized, the supervisor encounters another set of
pressures. The contract spells out the terms and conditions of the employer-
employee relationship. When the contract is violated, employees can point
to the contract and seek a remedy. They may go directly to a shop steward
or other union representative who will act in their behalf. A union contract
presses for conformity. Employees are to be treated in a like manner.
Supervisors of the employees covered by the collective bargaining
agreement are required to abide by its terms. They must enforce its
provisions or run the risk of being unable to make a contractual provision
stick.
In union-management relations, a concept has evolved called “past
practice.” In effect, past practice is what you do, not what you say you will
do. And the past practice has the effect of overriding the written intent of
the collective bargaining agreement. For example, suppose that the
company and union agree the employees working under the influence of
drugs or alcohol will be disciplined either by a suspension or discharge. If
one supervisor decides to make an exception by sending home a “good”
employee to “sleep it off” and no further action taken, on such an infraction,
the possibility of a reversal of the decision would be very likely.
JOB SPECIALISTS. Another factor that helps to shape the supervisor’s
job is the many job specialists that companies employ. These specialists
cover a wide range of interests, covering such areas as personnel (labor
relations, wage and salary, safety and health, training, and
nondiscrimination), efficiency experts (industrial engineers), quality control,
and the like.
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In a real sense, these specialists make valuable contribution to the
organization, they can do much to help supervisors reach their objectives.
They offer expertise to supervisors. They can point out possible solutions to
problems or better ways to reach performance objectives.
Efficiency is important to the supervisor. It is the total focus for the
methods engineer. Supervisors must deal with all these job demands, each
and every day. Striking a balance among the needs of the specialists, the
employees, and the performance objectives of the department can be
difficult, if not impossible to do.
TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS
A New Orientation to Work: Jobs Must Be Meaningful
The number and variety of pressures working on supervisors are
impressive. Besides coping with these supervisors must also be tuned into
the changes that are taking place around them. And it is not enough to
realize the change is taking place. Supervisors must understand the impact
that these developments have on the successful performance of the job.
There continues to be a great deal of debate over the degree of worker
commitment and loyalty to the employer. On one side of the debate,
pessimists will hold that “workers aren't what they used to be”. On the other
side, there are individuals who maintain that workers are better than ever.
Similar to our advertising slogans, they are individuals who maintain that
workers are better than ever. Similar to our advertising slogans, they are a
“new and improved” product.
Both sides miss the central point. People still retain their capacity for
commitment to work. But it is no longer a commitment to any work. We are
finding that a significant segment of the work force is rejecting jobs that are,
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to them, dull or dead-end. On the other hand, they are more actively seeking
what they regard as desirable jobs.
Financial security also comes from the various “safety nets” that are
available. The unemployed can receive help from one more sources to hide
them over, such as unemployment compensation, food stamps, termination
pay, and supplemental unemployment benefits.
The work ethic is still alive and well. People need to work, for it is work
that gives us status and self-respect. We are people who are coming to
exercise greater choice in all aspects of our life, and more and more of us
are being as selective about our employment as we are about the rest of our
activities. Therefore, we will choose jobs that make some concessions to our
self-interest.
The Changing Work Force
MORE EDUCATED WORKERS. It has already been mentioned that the
educational level of the work force has been steadily increasing. In 1940 the
median level of education was 8.7 years of schooling. By 1980, that level had
risen to 12.7 years. By 1980 two-thirds of the population had completed four
years of high school and over half of all American workers had some college.
And there is good reason to believe that the educational level will
remain high and possibly increase. For one thing, unemployment levels are
likely to remain high through the end of this century, 6 percent or greater.
Since the young suffer the heaviest burden when jobs are scarce (recent
employment figures show overall teenage unemployment staying near 20
percent while the overall unemployment rate is just over 7 percent), college
or vocational training becomes a respectable alternative to unemployment,
and the young will stay in school longer.
Having this greater education, our youth become more critical and
demanding of management. This additional schooling raises hopes of
meaningful work, higher earnings, and promotions. If these expectations do
not come to pass, the worker is likely to become frustrated, disillusioned,
and discontented. And many of these workers are more educated than their
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supervisors. Their education is superior not only in years of schooling, but in
the ability to adapt to the language and requirements of the new technology.
The older worker is also returning to school. In some cases, this is due
to workers being terminated because of a company shutdown or relocation.
In other situations, workers see the need for retaining because they no
longer possess the skills needed for new jobs. (Working skills can become as
obsolete as old machinery.) Or the worker may wish to qualify for a new
career. In any case, the need for more education is felt.
The older worker is able to count on receiving financial help and
support. Federal and state funding is available. Unions and companies will
negotiate retraining agreement. And colleges, faced with declining
enrollments, will actively go after this student body.
Socialization aims to build a base of shared attitudes and values that
foster cooperation and sense of belonging. Further, socialization helps people
function better because they learn what is right and wrong.
When considered against the principles of scientific management, the
schools performed very well. Under scientific management principles, work
in the factories and offices is repetitive, specialized, and time-oriented.
Hence, employers seek workers who are obedient, are willing to perform
routine and dull tasks, and are punctual and regular in attendance.
So far our schools have performed in harmony with these needs.
However, if predictions are correct about the nature of work changing—tasks
will become larger rather than smaller—such schooling may not be as
relevant. If workers have to be adaptable to frequent changes in work
assignments, and if they are asked to accept more and more responsibility,
is education and socialization process adequate to these needs?
Certainly, supervisors are affected by the various educational levels
they are finding in the work force. The person who is a supervisor in an urban
environment faces a special challenge. School in the cities have high dropout
and the quality of education is questionable. All this seems to suggest that
this supervisor is going to be faced with generation of few applicants with
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little work experience. Have few, if any, of the needed job skills, and lack
discipline necessary to adapt to a much more disciplined environment that
they have up to now faced.
Industry is used in schools by socializing students to punctuality and
regularity of attendance, obedience, and accepting the value of work as a
worthy end in and of itself. This, plus teaching the student basic skills of
reading, writing, and “computering,” prepare the youth for the world of work.
Bu if the schools fail in any part of this mission, or if the student drops out,
it would appear the basics must be handled by the company and supervisor.
The overall result is an uneven quality in our work force. Highly
educated workers may be less likely to accept authority. The workers want
more involvement on their jobs. They demand more career development
opportunities. The educationally disadvantaged, however, will need more
remedial training to prepare them to be productive in the workplace.
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Conclusions
The role of the supervisor is changing dramatically. Effective
supervisors are not going to control people the way they did it in the past.
Supervisors will now coach the employees and help them with their planning.
Supervisors will function as facilitators. Despite all the changes taking place,
supervisors will become more, not less, important to the organization. The
old-style supervisors may be in for hard times, but the role of the supervisor
has a bright future.
Achieving effectiveness is not an easy task. The theory is much easier
to understand than it is to apply. Making the transition is difficult. Do not let
the problems overwhelm you. Workers regularly make the successful
transition from worker to supervisor. Even supervisors with poor skills are
able to turn their careers around. It takes work. Supervisors, for the most
part, are made and not born. The process of becoming an effective
supervisor is relatively simple—understand the theory, apply it on the job,
and learn from the experience of doing things right.
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Test and Apply Your Knowledge
1. Differentiate the following concepts:
1.1 Administration from supervision
1.2 Traditional from modern concepts of administration and
supervision.
2. What skills do you consider as especially significant for administrative
and supervisory success?
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Lesson 2Functions and Principles of School Administration and Supervision
ObjectivesLesson 2 will provide the students with adequate understanding of the
functions and principles of school administration and supervision.
Furthermore, it will develop an insight of the value of leadership in school
administration and supervision.
Introduction The term function as used in education may mean the purpose or
activity to be accomplished by creative educative process. The term applies
to education as a whole, to a unit of a school system, or to some activities
carried on by the school. Functions are fulfilled by providing some ends or
goals. The school can achieve the administrative and supervisory functions.
The functions of the school are oftentimes determined by its organization
and classroom practices.
In a large school system, supervisory authority is usually delegated by
the superintendent to an assistant superintendent, to principals, and to
supervisors, of special educational fields, such as: health education, English,
home economics, music, and the like. Within the local school themselves,
there may be further divisions of administrative and supervisory
responsibility. The principal of a large high school may have one or more
administrative or supervisory assistants whose function is to supervise the
activities of specified groups of teachers and pupils within the school.
In a complicated and intricate school organization the chief supervisory
officer may find of his time and energy devoted to the care of an
administrative detail that gives him little opportunity for direct supervision.
This is particularly true of a principal of a large school. On account of the
pressure of administrative duties, the principal may be compelled to
delegate to his associates the actual supervision of the instructional
program.
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The Functions of Schools Administration
Although administration and supervision are interrelated, they have
different ad specific aims and functions. Some of the major functions of
administration are the following:
1. Planning for school programs or activities— Planning is a
fundamental function of school administration. It is the process of
determining the nature of the educational enterprise. The multifarious
school activities call for scientific planning on the part of the
administrator. In planning school programs or activities, the
administrator must take into consideration the general objectives to be
achieved, a sequence of appropriate learning experiences, the
procedures to be used in accomplishing them, and the criteria
employed to determine the degree of success achieved by the
program. In other words, the plan must show the objectives desired,
the proposed instructional materials, and the procedures outlines. The
general objectives must provide the guidelines. The learning
experiences should not be chosen simply because they are available.
They should be selected in order to accomplish the purposes of which
the school is organized and maintained.
The machinery for administration and the procedures to be used
in directing the educational enterprise must be planned only in terms
of our accepted goals for education. The school administrator must
also make a survey and analyze all the factors and conditions requiring
modification. It is his responsibility to encourage all the teaching staff
to cooperate in planning the school program. The planning of all these
complex activities needs the cooperation of all concerned.
A test of a successful administrator is his capacity to lead all
persons under him to a community of purpose and procedure. Group
participation in administration can succeed only insofar as there is
unity.
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2. Directing school work and formulating and executing
educational policies— After plans have been made, they must be
put into effect. Directing school work is another important function of
school administration. It includes a myriad of tasks carried out daily by
the school administrator. It involves decisions as to who shall carry out
plans; determination of the subjects to be included in each course;
provision for physical equipment necessary to carry out the work; and
many similar acts involved in carrying out all the aspects of the
educational program. It may necessitate issuing orders, holding
conferences, and supervising activities. Direction is a major aspect of
execution, and is particularly the province of school administration.
To facilitate direction of the school work, policies should be
formulated to regulate the control and operation of the school system.
The administrator should work our definite policies, regulations and
rules and embody them into a program. He should first study in a
practical way the needs of his school, his teachers, his pupils, and
those of the community, and evolve for them an administrative
program to be followed. The administrator, more than anyone else,
should endeavor constantly to bring the policies and the procedures of
the school system into line with the best interests of students in their
total living. The administrator should secure the assistance of others in
formulating educational policies, rules and regulations. The formulation
of school policies must be widely shared with the public. To make the
school administration dynamic, the educational policies and
regulations should be enforced, and the school administrator should be
held responsible for the results
3. Coordinating administrative and supervisory activities— It is the
function of the school administration to coordinate all the activities of
the school to make them contribute to the realization of the school's
main objectives. Administration harmonizes all educational activities
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and makes them bring all phases of the total school enterprise to a
harmonious working relationship around some central conception of
unity inherent in the process to be desired in learning. Likewise, since
administration is a means to learning which is the goal of supervision,
it must exemplify in its practices those democratic, interactive,
integrating processes basic to the successful functioning of the total
enterprise.
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4. Providing the necessary leadership— In the operations of the
school system, the administrator or the chief executive of any school
should be the professional leader of the teaching staff, working
scientifically, conscientiously, and democratically. An efficient
administrator exercises the necessary authority and definite
responsibility to ensure educational leadership. On him depends the
success of the school organization clothed with the necessary authority
and definite responsibility.
The improvement of the total teaching-learning situation, of the
classroom facilities, and the development of an efficient educational
program—all these require democratic leadership which is progressive
and objective. Democratic leadership implies an understanding of the
conditions under which one leads a consideration of individual
differences, and sympathy with the persons who are led.
The important duty of an administrator is to provide leadership in
the improvement of the staff. Leadership must be substituted for
authority. The authoritarian type of administration, where teachers are
constantly told “what to do” and “how to do it,” should be abandoned
and replaced by that type of involvement in the joint of development of
a constructive program. Leadership gathers justification for its
existence when it serves to emancipate teachers and pupils; when it
enriches their personalities; when it gives them a feeling of security
and belonging.
5. Evaluating the teaching personnel and the school program—
Evaluation, as an administrative function, includes teacher-rating and
school survey. In the Philippines, rating teachers is a legal
requirement. Regular teachers in public schools are rated annually,
while the temporary are rated twice a year. A Rating Scale is often
used by the administrator to discover the strengths and weaknesses of
the teaching personnel. Administrators rate teachers for the following
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reasons: (1) to eliminate incompetent teachers; (2) to improve
teaching through in-service education; and (3) to identify those who
merit promotion.
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School programs and conditions are evaluated through a school
survey. A school survey as an administrative function is valuable if the
staff of the school participates in making the appraisal. Survey and
other evaluations are primarily spring boards to further work. They
reveal the aspects of the program, in need of change, and indicate the
probable direction in which the changes should be made. A school
survey is an important function of school administration.
6. Keeping records and reporting results— Recording and reporting
are administrative functions to insure results with a maximum
delegation of authority. School records should be kept for comparison
and evaluation purposes. No content should go into records for which
no real use is likely to arise.
A well devised set of records requires the setting up of
administrative objectives and provides for the gathering of information
which enables the administrator to determine the extent to which
these objectives are being achieved.
The school administrator should be in a position to generalize
from facts placed at his hands. As a student of education, such as
retardation, elimination, costs of instructions, proportions of failures,
and many other things that indicate the kind of products his system is
producing. It is especially for such uses that well-organized records are
invaluable.
Reporting results to the public is an administrative function.
Annual reports and school publicity help the public to understand what
the schools can do and are doing, and are in themselves a democratic
way of operating the school system. However, merely informing the
public of what the schools are doing is not enough. The people must be
given an opportunity to participate in the discussion of possible
changes in policy.
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The Major Functions of Supervision
Supervision, like administration, has multifarious functions. The five
major functions of supervision are the following:
1. Inspection – The term refers to the study of existing school
conditions. The first task of a supervisor is to survey the school system
in order to discover problems or defects of the pupils, teachers,
equipment, school curriculum, objectives, and methods of instruction,
together with the conditions that surround them. Problems or defects
may be discovered through actual observations, educational tests,
conferences, questionnaires, and check lists. Once discovered they
should be classified into major and minor problems. The major defects
should be formulated into supervisory objectives to be attained for the
semester or for the year or course of years. Inspection as a function
must be based on actual facts.
2. Research –The fundamental aim of this function is to formulate a plan
to remedy the weakness or to solve the problem discovered. The
supervisor should conduct research to discover means, methods, and
procedures fundamental to the success of supervision. The solutions
discovered through research should be passed on to the teachers and
other personnel connected with the school system. Teachers in the
field should also be encouraged to conduct their own research for self-
improvement. Research as a function should be practical and
applicable to existing procedures and conditions.
Spain (1928) outlines the steps in supervisory research as follows.
(a) To discover existing defects in instruction.
(b) To seek improved methods of correcting defects.
(c) To formulate tentative plans to improve instruction
(d) To plan controlled experimental conditions
(e) To measure results of experiments
(f) To formulate tentative objectives and standards
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(g) To formulate a plan for the general use of method
(h) To present a plan to district principals for criticism, suggestion,
and approval.
3. Training – Acquainting the teachers with the solutions discovered or
formulated through research is within the training function of
supervision. Training may take the form of demonstration teaching,
workshops, seminars, directed observation, individual or group
conference, inter visitation, professional classes, or the use of bulletins
and circulars. Training function must be based on the democratic
principle of supervision.--respect for rights and opinions of others.
Supervision must endeavor to keep up with the best prevailing
standard of improving the total teaching-learning situation.
4. Guidance – The concept of guidance has found expression in the field
of school supervision. Guidance involves personal help given by
someone. It is the function of supervision to stimulate, direct, guide,
and encourage the teachers to apply instructional procedures,
techniques, principles, and devices. Assisting the teacher to
accomplish his purpose, and to solve the problems that arise in his
teaching are within the scope of guidance function. Guidance, like
training, should be given in the spirit of democratic leadership.
Guidance in supervision stimulates teachers to be creative.
Under this concept, the supervisor uses methods which best develop
the inner self-expression urges of teachers, and later on uses a variety
of projects which stimulate creative and reflective thinking. The
methods used may be either old or new to the supervisors; the primary
objective is teacher creativity. Creative thinking is the type of teaching
in which the teacher exhibits creative ability on her part. It is measured
by the extent to which the teacher's display of energy results in
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initiative, originality, individuality, self directed thinking, inventiveness,
growth of personality, purposeful creativity, and variation from
conventional practice.
An abbreviated statement of Cox’s principles of supervision for
creative teaching are given by Ayer as follows:
(a)Supervision for creative teaching helps teachers in setting up and
achieving their own teaching objectives.
(b)Supervision for creative teaching stimulates, guides, and rewards
worthwhile activities.
(c) The integration of the teacher’s personality is fundamental.
(d)Minor innovations and successes deserve first consideration.
(e)Self-supervision is an inherent quality of the creative artist.
(f) Understanding and skill in creative teaching are achieved gradually
and progressively.
(g)The support and encouragement of creative teaching are potentially
present among community groups and school officials.
(h)The creative teacher receives personal satisfaction and should be
given wide recognition for creative teaching.
5. Evaluation – This can be considered the ultimate major function of
supervision. The purpose of evaluation is to appraise the outcomes and
the factors conditioning the outcomes of instruction, and to improve the
products and processes of instruction. This function calls for the use of
educational tests and measurement. It is the duty of the supervisor to
help develop an adequate instrument with which to measure the
teaching-learning process and set up standards of attainment as are
necessary for the appraisal of the teacher’s progress in teaching, and the
pupils in his learning. Schoolwork should be evaluated in the light of
desirable educational objectives and social standards. The supervisor
should not prescribe specific means and methods of appraisal to be used
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in instruction but should assist the teacher to devise such, as new needs
arise. Evaluation must be based on educational aims and objectives.
Evaluation as a function of supervision serves many significant
purposes such as the following:
1. Evaluation discovers the needs of the individuals being evaluated
and familiarizes the teachers with the pupil’s needs and
possibilities.
2. Evaluation serves as guides for the selection of supervisory
techniques.
3. Evaluation appraises the educational growth of pupils which is the
end-product of supervision.
4. Evaluation appraises the quality of supervisory processes and the
supervisor’s competence.
5. Evaluation appraises the quality if the teaching processes and the
teacher’s efficiency.
6. Evaluation aids pupil-teacher planning.
7. Evaluation serves as a means of improving school-community
relations.
8. Evaluation improves the selection and the use of guiding principles
in supervision.
9. Evaluation appraises the success of the instructional program in
particular and of the supervisory program in general.
Other Functions of Supervision
Barr, Burton, and Bruekner give the following as the three major
functions of supervision with the supervisory activities under each.
1. Studying the Teaching-Learning Situation:
(a)Analyzing the objectives of education and supervision
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(b)Studying the products of teaching and learning
(c) Studying the satisfactory and unsatisfactory growth and
achievement
(d)Studying the interests, abilities, and work habits of the pupils.
(e)Studying the teacher at work and aiding her to study herself
(f) Studying the curriculum in operation
(g)Studying the materials of instruction and the socio-physical
environment of learning
2. Improving the teaching-Learning Situation:
(a) Improving the educational objectives and the curriculum
(b)Improving the teacher and her methods
(c) Improving the interests, application, and work habits of the pupils
(d)Improving the materials of instruction and the socio-physical
environment
3. Evaluating the Means, Methods, and Outcomes of Supervision:
(a)Discovering and applying the techniques of evaluation
(b)Evaluating the general work of supervision
(c) Evaluating the results of supervising plans
(d)Evaluating the factors limiting the instructional outcome
(e)Evaluating and improving the personnel of supervision
Crow and Crow (1947) give the following as important functions of
supervision which pertain to teaching and learning:
1. The interpretation of educational objectives.
2. The study of improvement of the curriculum and materials of
instruction.
3. The measurement of the individual pupil’s ability to learn.
4. The guidance of pupils toward improved study and work habits.
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5. The improvement of teaching techniques.
6. The evaluation of educational outcomes.
7. The critical study and improvement of supervising techniques
8. The stimulating of whatever creative ability may be inherent among
the supervised.
Like other functions, Crow and Crow also recognize inspection, training,
guidance, and evaluation as major functions of supervision.
Uses of Principles in School Administration and
Supervision
School administration or supervision, to be effective, must be based
upon modern principles of education. The application of the principles of
school administration and supervision may be stated as follows:
1. Principles are means by which the administrator and supervisor
proceed from one situation to another. They are important in the
exercise of administrative and supervisory activities.
2. Principles are instrumental in improving teaching and learning.
Improvement of instruction and promotion of better learning are the
fundamental aims of school administration and supervision.
3. Principles make for enormous economy of time and effort in
choosing techniques to be used. Principles govern the operation of
administrative and supervisory techniques.
4. Principles eliminate much of the blundering trail-and-error effort in a
practical piece of work. They give direction or point of destination.
5. Principles greatly aid in discovery of new techniques. They are
hypotheses that direct the search for new techniques in school
administration and supervision.
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6. Principles are needed to guide the choice and sequence of the
appropriate techniques at hand but in no way do they supplant the
fundamental rule techniques in carrying on the process and
activities which make up the work of administration and
supervision.
7. Principles aid in the evaluation of techniques, for they furnish a
broader basis by which to judge the techniques used in school
administration and supervision.
8. Principles define the items which must be scrutinized in evaluating
results. This implies an understanding of the fundamental
principles and functions of school administration and supervision.
9. Principles are used to evaluate the success of administrative and
supervisory programs. Administration and supervision are directed
and evaluated I terms of principles.
10. Principles lead the administrators and supervisors to further
activities for they are dynamic and not static. Principles change
with the discovery of new facts, with changes in social and moral
values, and with changes in teaching-learning situations.
General principles of Administration and Supervision
The following general principles summarize the implications of our
philosophy for administration and supervision. They do not represent new
ideas or concepts, but rather present-day thought and practices as guided by
this philosophy.
1. School administration and supervision must be democratic. If
school administration and supervision are to be democratic, some
reconstruction in thinking and practice must be made. Democracy in
education does not imply that the administrators and supervisors
abdicate their positions topermit teachers, parents, and pupils to run
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the school system. It does not imply that administrators and
supervisors must furnish a democratic type of leadership which is
measured in terms of the amount and quality of leadership which they,
in turn, foster in others.
Democratic school administration and supervision recognize
individual differences, respect personality, and extend consideration to
all. It is the aim of democracy to give the fullest measure of freedom
to the individual to develop his maximum capacities so long as this
development does not interfere with the welfare and rights of others.
Democratic administration and supervision make it possible for each
individual to make distinctive contribution to the work of the school.
Democratic socialization, as the controlling objective of education,
challenges the administrator and supervisor for a total reconstruction
of education.
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Some of the characteristics or practices of an autocratic and a democratic
administrator or supervisor are hereby presented by Koopman, Miel, and
Minser (1943) for comparison:
AUTOCRATIC
1. Thinks he can sit by himself and see all angles of a problem
2. Does not know how to use the experience of others.
3. Cannot bear to let any of the strings of management slip from his fingers.
4. Is so tied to routine details that he seldom tackles his larger job
5. Is jealous of ideas; reacts in one of several ways when someone else makes a proposal.
6. Makes decisions that should have been made by the group
7. Adopts a paternalistic attitude toward the group- “I know best.”
8. Expects hero-worship, giggles with delight at his attempts at humor, and so forth
9. Does not admit even to himself that he is autocratic
10. Sacrifices everything –teachers, students, progress – to the end of a smooth-running system.
11. Is greedy for publicity12. Gives others as few
opportunities for leadership as possible. Makes committee assignments,
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DEMOCRATIC
1. Is quick to recognize and praise an idea that comes from someone else.
2. Refers to the group all matters that concern the group
3. Maintains the position of friendly, helpful adviser both on personal and professional matters.
4. Wishes to be respected as a fair and just individual as he respects other.
5. Consciously practices democratic techniques
6. Is more concerned with the growth of individuals involved than with freedom from annoyances
7. Pushes others into the foreground so that they may taste success.
8. Believes that as many individuals as possible should have opportunities to take responsibility and exercises leadership.
9. Consciously practices democratic techniques
10. Is more concerned with the growth-of individuals involved than with freedom from annoyances.
11. Pushes others into the foreground so that they may taste success.
12. Believes that as many individuals as possible should have opportunities to take responsibility and exercises leadership.
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Democratic school administration and supervision observe the following
basic principles:
a. Democratic school administration and supervision respect the
authority if truth and happiness rather than that of autocratic
leaders. These respect the authority derived from below rather
than the one imposed from above.
b. Democratic school administration and supervision call for the way
of living within the school that is indicated by the concept of
democracy. To improve man’s ability to live and work with his
fellowmen is still the most challenging goal in administration and
supervision.
c. Democratic school administration and supervision demand that
participation should not be limited to line-and-staff officers but
should also be extended to the classroom teachers and the
student body. Theoretically, the broader the participation, the
better the administration and supervision.
d. Democratic school administration and supervision involve
leadership and consideration as well as general participation. This
calls for dynamic leadership where both administrator and
supervisor must be experts in social engineering. Their function is
to point the way to the improvement of the schools in terms of
changes necessary to meet demonstrated and felt needs.
e. Democratic school administration and supervision call for
continuous evaluation, rethinking, and redirection of effort. This
principle emphasizes the fact that conditions are constantly
changing, that thinking changes with changing conditions, and
that, consequently, any organization set up today may need
f. Democratic school administration and supervision demand that
the execution of the major or minor policies should be in the hands
of the administrator with such assistance from the staff personnel
30
as is necessary. This is based on the principle that after the
policies have been determined by pooling the best thinking of all
concerned, their execution must be trusted to the administrative
officer.
g. Democratic school administration and supervision demand that
the administrator or supervisors must have to forfeit the power
and authority that are his by right of training and experiences and
by endowment from the people. The power and authority must
come from below.
2. School administration and supervision must be cooperative in
character. Cooperation is practically synonymous with group action.
This principle is closely related to the democratic principle of
administration and supervision. A democratic principle cannot
function in an undemocratic set-up. Education must be an essentially
cooperative process growing out of needs and aspirations of each
member of the group; it must not apply only to the teachers but also
to the pupils as well. As the democratic function of education is to
improve learning for every individual, administration and supervision
must be directed towards that end. The administrator or the
supervisor is supposed to lead his personnel toward a certain definite
goal. Results are accomplished when unity in action, coordination in
movement, and harmony in thinking, prevail. The administrator’s or
supervisor’s concern should be to eliminate misunderstanding which
is not conducive to cooperation, and progress results from the
combined efforts of all. The success of administration and
supervision depends upon the cooperation among administrators,
supervisors, teachers, parents, and pupils.
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Barr and Burton* suggested that cooperative understanding between
the teachers, principals, and supervisors can be accomplished by using the
following basic principles:
(1)Cooperative administration and supervision are highly socialized
functions and imply willingness to work together. Much can be
accomplished by cooperation than by being a single-handed
worker. The experiences of all his co-workers whose opinions are
considered and sought on all matters of vital importance to the
group. Cooperation means bringing together diverse talents to
work for common ends.
(2)Cooperative administration and supervision stimulate initiative,
self-reliance, and individual responsibility on the part of all persons
in the discharge of their duties. This principle is based on the
concept that educational workers are capable of growth.
(3)Cooperative administration and supervision substitute leadership
for authority. Democratic administration and supervision
recognize that leadership is a function of every individual and that
authority is to be derived from group planning, group execution
and group evaluation.
(4)Cooperative administration and supervision provide opportunity
for growth and development. Teachers are encouraged to
experiment and to discover for themselves the teaching
techniques and devices that may prove most effective in their
particular teaching-learning situations.
(5)Cooperative administration and supervision promote
understanding between administrators, supervisors, and
classroom teachers. When administrators or supervisors, and both
groups work together, both make greater and more effective
efforts in the interests of the students.
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(6)Cooperative administration and supervision observe a code of
professional ethics that is real, practical, and vital. Cooperation
can be easily established on ethical basis. It can be said that the
whole trend in modern industry and business is toward more and
more thinking, planning, and organization carried on by
cooperating groups of self-directed workers and less and less
through administrative dictum or fiat.
3. School administration and supervision, to be effective, must
be scientific. Scientific administration and supervision for the ideas
that the improvement of instruction may be based upon measurable
and controllable data. Both administration and supervision make use
of the scientific principle that the solution of problems should be
based on facts. Valid principles of administration and supervision are
based upon scientific investigations directed toward the improvement
of teaching and the promotion of better learning. Efficient
administration and supervision are characterized by scientific
knowledge, ability, skills, and attitude.
Scientific administration and supervision observe the following
practices:
a. Scientific administration and supervision are based upon
observable facts. The best way to determine whether a thing is
present or not is to look and see. The principle of “look and see”
has been far-reaching in its consequence both in school
administration and supervision. As a rule, we see only those
things we look for. Both administrator and supervisor must be
fact-conscious.
b. Scientific administration and supervision employ the method of
analysis in the comprehension of complex administrative and
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supervisory problems by breaking them into comprehensive units.
The details of complex problems are brought into focus of
attention and made understandable.
c. Scientific administration and supervision employ hypothesis in
guiding the thinking process. Administration and supervision have
employed this natural tendency of the mind to generalize from the
experiences at hand as a means for the systematic study of
relationship of all factors effecting teaching and learning.
d. Scientific administration and supervision are free from emotional
bias. The minds of the administrator and supervisor are free from
ordinary entanglements and flexible enough to entertain new
ideas. Likes and dislikes which color facts are not allowed but
facts contrary to a temporarily entertained point of view are
entertained.
e. Scientific administration and supervision employ objective
measurement and quantitative methods in the treatment of data.
Normative survey method, cooperative casual method, and ease
method are scientific procedures of great value to the school
administrator and supervisor.
4. School administration and supervision must be based on
accepted educational philosophy. A philosophy is a background
of theory, knowledge and beliefs which explains and justifies a
selected way of life. Educational philosophy affects the thinking and
resultant actions of the leaders who control public school
administration and supervision. The evolution of administrative and
supervisory activities should be influenced by one’s educational
philosophy. Philosophy furnished direction and orientation to all
educational efforts and criteria for sound educational practices.
Dewey’s educational theory that education is life, growth, a social
process, and a reconstruction of human experiences is the guiding
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philosophy of education is the integration of personality –the building
of personality which has the maximum growth and which possesses a
well-developed standard of values giving consistency and unity to all
thinking, feeling, and acting. Administration or supervision is
sensitive to ultimate aims, values, and policies with special reference
to their adequacy.
The organization of leadership in any school system should be
consistent with the educational philosophy achieved by the school
system. In drawing up any program for improving instruction,
administrators, supervisors, and teachers must constantly keep in
mind the demands which democracy makes of education, which must
be satisfied if the schools are to achieve true functions. The guiding
philosophy of our educational system us well outlined in our
Constitution in terms of objectives, namely: development of moral,
personal discipline, civic conscience, vocational efficiency, and
citizenship training.
5. School administration and supervision must be creative. The
term creative means initiating, suggesting, devising, inventing,
experimenting, or producing something new. Creative administration
or supervision denoted and encourage growth. It brings new and
original ways of doing things on the part of the individual. When
teachers are given freedom to use the methods they think best to
modify these methods to suit their particular class, democratic
thinking is present then. Only the free can create. For creative
activity is the assertion of the human spirit against any and all odds,
that is to say the very voice of freedom; and creative activity is
essential component of democracy. A sense of personal freedom is
itself, the chief end of democracy
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It can be concluded that creative administration and
supervision observe the following practices:
a. Creative administration and supervision provide opportunity for
the teachers and the pupils to grow through the exercise of their
talents and abilities under expert professional guidance and
encouragement. To accomplish this, the superintendent must
organize a cooperative professional program which will
intelligently utilize the results of scientific research and the kind of
experiences that will enable them to appreciate relationship.
b. Creative administration and supervision are free from the control
and tradition and actuated by the spirit of inquiry. To be creative,
administrative and supervisory problems must be attacked
democratically and scientifically. Creative administration and
supervision exercise democratic and scientific procedures and
practices in observing teacher and pupils at work.
c. Creative administration and supervision need scientific-
mindedness, social-mindedness, and recognition of the importance
of human element. Teachers and pupils are individuals with
varying abilities, interests, and needs.
d. Creative administration and supervision provide opportunity for a
conference or a meeting between the administrator, the
supervisor, and the teacher. Exchange of ideas between the
teacher and supervisor, or between the administrator and the
supervisor, will promote an attitude of cooperation and
friendliness.
e. Creative administration and supervision recognize that every
teacher and pupil have the capacity for some degree of creative
achievement in one field or another. It is the duty of the
administrator and supervisor to provide such learning
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opportunities that this power of creation may be given a chance to
express itself.
6. Administration and supervision must be evaluated in the light
of their results. Just as teachers and pupils have profited directly
and indirectly from the introduction of more accurate methods of
evaluating educational growth, there is every reason to believe that
administrators and supervisors too would profit by the introduction of
similar means of evaluating their own work as school leaders. Every
person with leadership responsibility should be expected to furnish
tangible evidence of the effectiveness of the program for the
improvement that he proposes to put into operation. It has been
pointed out that only by knowing as accurately as possible the results
of instruction can the processes of education be improved.
Administrators, supervisors, and teachers naturally all want to use
the most effective means and materials available. Administrative or
supervisory leadership is decidedly hampered in many respects by
the use of outmoded traditional practices instead of more effective
means and methods of evaluation.
The term evaluation implies a purpose to ascertain the values
of an enterprise. To evaluate something, then, is to determine the
adequacy of some parts or elements of the constituency with
reference to some other parts or elements of the constituency with
reference to some other parts of the inclusive whole. Evaluation is
ordinarily a many-sided affair; one may consider the adequacy of a
pupil’s control for a specified purpose under consideration, or one
may consider the adequacy of a pupil’s control in relation to his
maturity, his past training and experience, his interests, or his
capacity. The evaluation may be made, too, whether in terms of
results or in terms of criteria relating to important antecedents. The
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effectiveness of administration and supervision, for example, may be
determined either through application of criteria designed to judge
the value of activities performed by administrators or supervisors, or
through the measurement of the immediate and more remote
outcomes of the administrative or supervisory program.
The purpose for which effectiveness of administrative or
supervisory leadership may be evaluated are the following:
a. The ultimate purpose of school administration or supervision is to
promote pupil-growth, hence, eventually the improvement of
society.
b. The second general purpose of administration or supervision is to
formulate and carry out cooperatively educational policies and
plans designed to achieve the ultimate goal.
c. The third general purpose of administration or supervision is to
supply leadership in securing continuity and constant re-
adaptation of the educational program over a period of years from
level to level within the system, and from one area of learning
experiences and content to another.
d. The immediate purpose of administration or supervision is to
develop cooperatively favorable settings for teaching and learning.
The results by which effectiveness of administration or
supervision may be evaluated in terms of the following:
a. Results must be measured in terms of the child’s total growth in
knowledge, habits, skills, abilities, and attitudes or in terms of the
desired educational objectives.
b. Results must be measured in terms of the teacher’s growth or
improvement in the selection of subject matters, formulation and
38
evaluation of aims, selection of methods and techniques, and
appraisal of educational products.
c. Results must be measured in terms of the administrator’s or
supervisor’s growth in educational leadership. Educational
leadership calls for the enrichment of individual lives.
d. Results must be measured in terms of the physical improvement
of the school buildings and grounds favorable to teaching and
learning.
e. Results may be measured in terms of community improvement
and its relation to the school. The integration of the school and
community is also fundamental in evaluating results.
7. Responsibility and control in matters of school administration
and supervision must run parallel throughout the system.
This principle of parallelism of duties is the particular sphere to which
the school administrator or supervisor is assigned and for which he is
responsible. This principle is the foundation for any form of
democratic practice. Democracy in its full meaning involves sharing
of responsibility whenever authority is shared. If a person is given
authority to act, or a teacher is given authority to act for a principal,
there should be some way for him to share in the responsibility for
success or for a failure. Holding an administrator or supervisor
responsible for results without giving him the control necessary for
their attainment is equally as bad as giving him powers and not
demanding products. Demanding certain results from the teacher is
practicable only when the teacher is permitted the necessary control
or procedure for the attainment of those results.
8. School administration must be distinguished from
supervision. Administration and supervision have different
meanings and functions. They are not synonymous terms.
39
Misconception regarding this difference undoubtedly causes more
misunderstanding and possibly more neglect of duty than can be
attributed to any other cause. When the duty is not clearly defined, it
is easy to overlook it, or to realize only part of it, or even to deem it
unimportant because it is not given clear and complete
interpretation. Unquestioned responsibility induces adequate action;
in its absence, what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.
Overlapping functions cannot be definite. If two persons are
jointly responsible for the same work, they cannot be held
responsible individually, nor can harmony be expected. Good
teamwork divides each activity into distinct assignments, however
small each may be.
9. School administration and supervision must be preventive
and constructive. Any help that an administrator or supervisor can
give to teachers so that they may avoid mistakes is commendable.
The administrator or supervisor who is able to anticipate problems of
this kind of assistance is especially valuable to the beginners in a new
school or who are newcomers to the teaching profession. The skilled
administrator or supervisor who anticipates the possible difficulties
that may be experienced by his new teachers, and who starts early to
direct and to guide their teaching activities, is practicing preventive
school administration and supervision.
As a well-trained and experienced administrator or supervisor
works with his teachers, old or new, he builds self-confidence in them
by recognizing and commending their capabilities and by helping
them to discover their own weakness, for the improvement of which
he suggests desirable changes of attitude or in procedures. The
attitude of this kind of supervisor or administrator is always positive
40
and forward-looking, and a stimulation to teachers toward self-
improvement.
10. School administration and supervision must be centered
on child growth and development. The main purpose of
administration and supervision is to provide conditions favorable to
the growth and development of children. Administration and
supervision must, therefore, be so organized and conducted that the
growth of the whole personality of the child is possible. The teachers,
supervisors, and administrators must always keep in mind the child
and his needs, abilities, and interests in terms of his development.
They must study children to determine their difficulties and
potentialities, and the most suitable type of education which will
make it possible for them to grow mentally, physically, morally,
emotionally, and socially.
11. School administration and supervision must be flexible.
An administrative and supervisory program must be flexible enough
to adapt itself to the type of school organization and to the needs of
each particular supervisory teaching-learning situation. Flexibility
may be characterized by its being adaptable and readily adjustable to
meet the requirement of changing conditions. Flexibility as used in
school administration and supervision may cover the following:
Flexibility of school building – the adaptability of the school
building to various uses as needs and conditions change.
Flexibility of the curriculum – the adaptability of the school
subjects as to the needs and interest of the pupils and to the rapid
changing conditions of the community and the country in general.
41
Flexibility of objectives and teaching procedures – the adaptability
of aims and methods to meet the conditions of the different
schools, teaching personnel, student population and communities.
Flexibility of instructional materials and devices – the adaptability
differences of the pupils and the varied training and experiences
of the teaching personnel.
Flexibility of school requirements and standard norms – the
adaptability of procedures to fit the individualities of the pupils,
teachers, supervisors, and administrators.
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The principle of flexibility in school administration and supervision observes
the following practices:
(1) Flexible school administration and supervision adapt activities to
meet individual differences of teachers in training, experiences, and
abilities. Because of these differences the administrator and
supervisor should avoid over-emphasis of standard norms, goals, and
prescriptive measures.
(2)Flexible school administration and supervision adapt adjust the types
and length of classroom visit to the particular purposes and needs of
the teaching-learning situations. The administrator and supervisor
should give special attention to the new and experienced teachers.
(3)Flexible school administration and supervision encourage and assist
teachers to use flexible assignments and methods must be modified
to meet individual differences of the pupils and to meet the
individualities of the teachers.
(4)Flexible school administration and supervision adapt itself to the
needs of each particular teaching-learning situation. School
situations vary and personalities are unique. The administrator and
supervisor need to understand that a supervisory arrangement in one
situation will not fit another situation exactly..
(5)Flexible school administration and supervision encourage pupils to
suggest ways they would like to work and to give them opportunity to
plan, work, and evaluate their own activity. They should be
encouraged to set up standards and to make records of their own
program.
(6)Flexible school administration and supervision meet the needs and
desires of teachers. A knowledge of individual needs and desires of
teachers is basic to almost any type of school administration and
supervision. Individual needs of teachers can be determined by the
use of self-appraisal check list, rating scales, information tests,
43
changes of pupils, evaluation of pupil progress, and analysis of
teacher’s training and experiences. The school administrators and
supervisors should be prepared to assist teachers to meet their needs
and desires.
44
Other Principles of Administration and Supervision
There are other definite principles of school administration that
should be known to school administrators. Among the basic principles of
good school administration suggested by Crow and Crow (1947) are the
following:
Teacher-participation should be stimulated in the kind of education
that will provide good citizenship training.
There should be developed and put into practice the kind of
curriculum that guarantees continuous pupil-growth.
The educational program of the school should embody the
cooperative efforts of faculty and student alike.
The building and equipment should be used to maximum capacity.
All school facilities should be utilized that every child is given an
opportunity to participate in the educational offerings of the school.
The various members of the school personnel should be assigned in
such a way that everyone can utilize his energies toward the
achievement of maximum efficiency.
The formulation of school policies should follow democratic principles
of faculty and pupils’ participation and cooperation.
The authority that is delegated by the principal to the members of his
staff should be used wisely. Authority granted to pupils should be
supervised carefully lest, as a result of pupil immaturity and lack of
experience, it be abused.
Well-trained teachers and other personnel should be secured and
should be given the freedom of activity that is commensurate with
their ability to use it effectively.
All educational responsibilities should be defined carefully and
specifically, and should be understood by all concerned. There
should be no doubt in the mind of any school official concerning the
limits of his individual authority.
45
The best interests of the entire school should be basic to any decision
that is made relative to the welfare of the pupils, the teachers, or the
school in general.
The leadership of the principal should such as to inspire all – pupils
and teachers alike – toward better and more complete
accomplishment.
There are likewise other definite principles which should be known to
the supervisor. Peckham (1948) selected ten major principles to cover the
field of supervision as follows:
1. Cooperation
2. Leadership
3. Planning
4. Integration
5. Creativity
6. Flexibility
7. Considerateness
8. Community
9. Orientation
10. Evaluation
The success of any school system depends upon democratic
administration and efficient supervision. The complexity of school
organization arising from changing social conditions, increase in school
population and teaching personnel (who are mostly non-professionally
trained), changes in theories and methods of techniques brought about by
recent scientific investigations and researches and changes in curricula
because of the needs and demands of the time, call for a democratic
administration and supervision which can be the only valid and perhaps,
most efficient method of securing educational ends in a democracy. The
school can become a powerful force in maintaining and improving
democracy only when the administrative and supervisory personnel
46
become deeply concerned with developing technique of administration and
supervision that is thoroughly democratic and consequently efficient;
hence, administration and supervision must be established on a democratic
basis.
47
Test and Apply your Knowledge
1. Discuss briefly the functions of school administration and
supervision.
2. What are the principles of supervision? Explain briefly each principle.
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Lesson 3New Dimensions of Supervision
Objectives
The objectives of this lesson are to familiarize the graduate students
about the challenges that the supervisors may encounter in the discharge
of their functions; and to know the qualities that make for supervisory
success.
Introduction
“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.” The person who coined
that phrase may very well have been talking about the job of a supervisor.
In many aspects, it is a dirty job, and, yes, somebody has to do it. In fact, a
whole lot of somebodies have to do it because job is central to
organizational effectiveness. Virtually every organization makes use of the
first-level supervisor.
First-level supervisor run the departments that achieve the goals that
have been set for them. Supervisors further the objectives of the
organization. All employees count, but supervisors are uniquely positioned
between management and the worker to see the providing of a quality
product or service. In short, supervisors make sure the job gets done. And
quite a job that is, especially when performed to its fullest range.
The job must be viewed in a context of interrelated elements: a
management system, worker expectations, competitive demands, and
cultural changes. Further, the job has been under attack from a variety of
directions. Government, management itself, and labor unions have
chipped away at the duties and responsibilities of the supervisor, resulting
in a job that is diminished in scope.
49
This text is designed to explain what supervision is all about and
where it is headed. It will explore supervisory effectiveness and give a
broader vision of the supervisor’s job than is now being described. Once
the broader job definition is accepted and the supervisor is willing and
allowed by management to take back the prerogative that has been lost
over the years, the supervisor will be better able to fulfill his or her role in
the organization. And it will become apparent that the supervisor’s role is
challenging, dynamic, and rewarding.
Qualities That Make For Supervisory Success
1. Technical Competence
The qualifications for the supervisor’s job are impressive (see Figure
2). Supervisors need to be technically competent, that is, knowing the
product and its specifications, the machinery and its capabilities, the
process employed, and the reasons why these processes are necessary.
Further technical competency means knowing the competency
means knowing the company rules or provisions of the collective
bargaining agreement, if there is one. It means knowing the labor laws and
other government regulations that apply to your business.
This knowledge must not be superficial. Vague notions about product
specifications or scheduling requirements will not do. The supervisors need
an in-depth knowledge. Supervisors are the resource people for the
workers, so it is necessary that they be a good resource. This can only be
accomplished by developing a thorough technical competency.
2. Good People Skills
Employees are selected to be supervisors because, among other
things, they are good workers. New supervisors do not fail because they
50
lack technical know-how; rather, they fail because they are unable to get
others to work effectively for them. They lack people skills.
It is necessary to make a mental adjustment. The traits that qualify
one for promotion have to do with one’s individual effectiveness. As a
beginning employee, for example, you were productive. You had the right
attitude. This is where a transition is necessary. Your individual effort,
productivity, and attitude is now less important to your success. Instead,
now you must get the group to do what you were able to do so well. It is a
plus if you can instill enthusiasm and commitment in people. In other
words, you have leadership qualities.
3. A sense of Urgency
Supervisors have a well-developed “sense-of-urgency” – a balance
between panic and apathy. The supervisor sets the tone for the work group,
and a necessary part of this tone is that all the day’s primary objectives
must be met. Not only are they to be met, they must be met in a certain
way – with a sense of urgency. The supervisor conveys the view that
assignments are necessary, schedules are commitments, and budgets are
legitimate and to be followed. If the assignments are made on the basis of
convenience, then the supervisor and the department are wasting a
precious resource – time.
4. Controls
Company controls such as budgets, schedules, performance
standards, and the like are all necessary to keep people on track and to get
the desired results. Effective supervisors develop departmental controls
that do for them what the larger controls for the company – channel
everyone’s effort in the desired direction to help reach the expected goals.
Many of these departmental controls will be the same as the overall
company controls. After all, your responsibility is to meet, on a reduced
scale, these larger organizational objectives. Other controls can be
personal. How do you want certain questions directed – to you or to
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others? If employees need equipment repaired, should they clear it though
you or go directly to the tool crib? If employees have questions in
termination pay or benefits, should they clear this through you or through
the personnel department?
Will you allow you employees to make minor schedule changes,
material substitutions, or procedure changes? Supervisors must appreciate
that when controls are put in place, they have the effect of focusing
attention on these areas. And, if supervisors constantly monitor these
control points, then employees are not likely to stray from the desired path.
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5. The Pygmalion Attitude
Finally, an important personal quality for success in supervision is to
have the right attitude toward one’s employees in a very real sense; the
expectations of the company and the supervisor go a long way toward
shaping the attitudes and performance of the employees.
It has been found that when the supervisor conveys to the employees
high expectation for their performance, those employees try to perform up
to the level of that expectation. When little is expected of employees, they
behave accordingly; the trick is to help people reach their potential. Do
this by giving them job training, setting high performance standards, and
by your example, showing that they can accomplish difficult tasks.
6. The New Dimensions
Besides these traditional qualifications, some new dimensions to the
job have to be added in response to the changing conditions in our society.
These new dimensions include a need for the supervisor to an economic
advocate, a conference leader, and a facilitator (see Table 5).
Table 5The New Dimensions of the Supervisor’s Job
Economic Advocate Understands the importance of profits and the consequences of
failure to be competitive in the marketplace.Communicates the economic realities to
employees.
Conference Leader Relies increasingly on group meetingsRecognizes that employees want more information.Believes that employees need to educate the
workers better.
Facilitator Believes that employees need less bossing, more helping.
Removes obstacles that hinder employees.Concentrates on making it easier for employees to
function.
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ECONOMIC ADVOCATE. Let us consider these dimensions one at a
time. As an economic advocate, the supervisor speaks for our economic
system and serves to educate the workers to its harsh realities. With its
ups and downs, the economy has changed drastically over the last 40
years. The period between 1950 and 1073 has been referred to as the
“golden age of industrialism.” It may well have been the longest sustained
period of prosperity and productivity in our history.
Management enjoyed ever-higher profits and growth. A nation we
became complacent and thought ourselves free of the competitive realities
of the marketplace. Because any economic downturn was seen as
temporary, American business ignored the fact that there was a
relationship between the performance of employees and the continued
prosperity of employers. The oversight cost us dearly in terms of our ability
to compete in local, national, and world markets.
Between 1969 and 1976, the United States lost over 22 million jobs in
manufacturing and nonmanufacturing. Plants were closed in New England,
the Midwest, and even the South. Imports contributed greatly to the jobs
loss. Consider these figures.
In the early 1960s, imported cars took about 6 percent of the United
States market. Twenty years later, imports accounted for 18 percent of our
car sales.
In roughly the same time period, imported steel rose from 9 percent
of the market to around 26 percent. In the period 1975 – 1979, steel
companies employed an average of 453,000 salaried and hourly paid
workers. In 1984 that figured dropped below 250,000 people.
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The United States was not doing any better in the export market.
Our capital goods and “high-tech” industries lost export market shares
during the 1970s. For the period, 1970 – 1980, our share of the world’s
aircraft market dropped from 67 percent; machine tools, from 18 percent to
11 percent; semiconductors, from 40 percent to 23 percent; and chemicals,
from 24 percent to 17 percent. Our consumer electronics industry is gone.
These products may still be sold by American companies, but they are
basically no longer made here in the United States.
The economic education of the worker is going to grow in importance.
The person most favorably positioned to the teacher is the supervisor. He
or she must be the economic advocate. But, for supervisors to be effective
advocates, they must themselves understand the importance of quality,
costs, competition, productivity, and the other concepts that relate to
profits and loss and job security. The supervisors must regularly
communicate these issues to the workers. Take advantage of group and
individual meetings, performance review sessions, and any other
appropriate forum to drive the point home. Remember, by the large the
American worker is not schooled in the importance of these issues.
CONFERENCE LEADER. The second new dimension for supervisors
involves a significant shift in their communication role. Reliance on
communicating one on one is no longer enough. Supervisors have to learn
how to manage group discussions. For one thing, it makes good business
sense to use the total brainpower of the organization. Further, employees
are demanding to hear and be heard on job issues that affect them.
Employees want information; they demand participation.
The supervisor’s communication must adjust to these new conditions.
This shift in emphasis has a number of implications. First, employees are
not used to sitting in on meeting and offering ideas. After years of being
55
told what to do and how to do it, it is not easy to get employees to open up
participatory discussion sessions. Second, supervisors need training before
they can hold effective group discussions. They need to learn techniques
on how to get employee participation, use time wisely. Third, management
has a legitimate concern that meetings might get out of hand, be time and
money waster, and raise unreasonable expectations among employees.
Beyond all this is the risk that having group meetings can undermine
the authority and status of the supervisor. After all, the boss should be the
boss, the supervisor may be seen as weak or inadequate. But is it
reasonable to assume that the supervisor must know more about each and
every job than every worker in the department? These are the questions
that the supervisor has to ask. The supervisor has to recognize there is a
risk associated with employee participation, but the risk is more than offset
by the possible gains that come from harnessing the untapped potential of
the work force.
FACILITATOR. The third new dimension moves the supervisor away
from being a “boss” to being a facilitator. This is a pronounced shift in
emphasis. The new supervisor does less “bossing” looking over the
shoulder and calling on employees for more and better performance.
Instead, the supervisor becomes the resource person for the department.
Information, training, leading and standard setting are among the things
supervisors should emphasis.
These activities focus on helping workers to perform their tasks. The
supervisor must act in ways that make it easier for workers to perform.
Obstacles must be removed. Employees must be better trained and
oriented. Materials must be available when needed and equipment kept in
good repair. Doing this will result in a shift in responsibilities for both the
supervisor and the employees.
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Supervisors will do more planning, preparing, and guiding.
Employees will have the opportunity to exercise a degree of self-direction
and initiative largely denied them until now.
Tips and Techniques for Supervisors
1. Effective supervisors have learned to pay attention to the little details
of the job. It may be more interesting to look at the big picture, but it
is the little details that trip you.
A salesperson may be turning in impressive dollar amounts, but the
effective supervisor looks beyond the total figure. Where is the
business coming from – a few accounts or from the total territory?
Are new accounts being established? Is the total product line being
sold or only a few items? Have certain customers stopped ordering?
If so, does the sales person know why?
2. The daily newspaper is filled with items to discuss as an economic
advocate, Strikes, plant closings, and relocations are powerful
reminders of what can happen to a company and its employees. The
monthly unemployment figures and inflation rate are important
topics.
3. As a personal philosophy, supervisors should heed the advice of Peter
Drucker. He observed that people grow according to the demands
they place on themselves. “If they demand little of themselves, they
will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they
will grow…without any more effort than is expended by the non-
achiever.”
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4. Do not forget that you are a role model. The example you set is as
important to your workers as the orders you give.
You were selected to be a supervisor because you were an excellent
worker. However, once you become a supervisor, being an excellent
worker no longer matters much. In fact, continuing “to work” could
be fatal. Now your job calls for you getting others to do the actual
work. The inability to let go of the past can lead to supervisors’
eventual failure.
It is important that you identify with the support management,
though not at the expense of the employees. You need to available
to them when they need you. Also, having a management
perspective does not mean that you are insensitive to the concerns of
employees. Listen to your works and be ready to support them when
they are in need and in the right.
Management has confidence in you; otherwise, you would not have
been selected for a supervisor’s position. You probably have a
number of new ideas you want to put into effect. You may want to
rearrange the department. You may want to “shape up” the workers.
Or you may wish to change procedures. Be careful. It is a wiser
course of action to get your “feet on the ground.” Learn the job first.
Gain an understanding of what is done and why. After you know the
job, discuss them with your supervisor. Get the benefit of that
person’s expertise as well as consent for your proposed changes.
Take seriously the warning, bosses do not like surprises.
Although beginning supervisors should get adequate training and
supervision while they are learning their new job, this support is often
missing. Seek it from qualified sources. Try to identify especially
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effective supervisors. Analyze those people and how they operate.
Learn from them. What are the keys to their success? Can you use
any of their techniques to improve your effectiveness? You will find
that experienced and successful supervisors are excellent role
models as well as good people to go for advice.
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Lesson 4Roles of School Supervisor
Objectives
The objective of this lesson is to be able to know the historical
development of the field of supervision; formulate a working definition of
supervision; describe a conceptual model of supervision; identify
supervision in a school system; list common tasks of supervision; describe
various roles of supervisors; state what you believe to be the minimal
qualifications of a supervisor.
Supervision Defined
One of the best-kept secrets outside the education profession and, to
a degree even within the profession, is the existence of a large shadow
army of school personnel known by the collective title of supervisors.
Parents and sometimes teachers profess not to know of the presence of
these specialists in the school systems of the nation. Although laypersons
may be aware that school systems employ a variety of personnel, such as
custodians, secretaries, cafeteria workers, and counselors, the concept of
school personnel held by a typical layperson is that of a teacher in every
classroom and a principal in every school. Were members of the
community asked to identify a school supervisor, they would probably
indicate the principal, who may or may not be the sole supervisor. Or they
might refer to the superintendent, who plays a relatively small part in the
type of supervision discussed in this book, namely, instructional
supervision.
Considering the veritable army of supervisors on local and state
levels of schooling throughout the country, it is surprising to find that the
role of the supervisor in education remains rather ill defined. Business and
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industry are not troubled by this same malady. The position of commercial
or industrial supervisor is highly visible and well defined in the managerial
structure of the organization. Educational supervisors may or may not be a
part of the managerial structure of school systems. The question of
whether they should be part of management is, as we will discover later, a
storm center among specialists in supervision. Responsibilities of
educational supervisors are not at all clear from locality to locality and from
state to state. Even within localities, supervisory roles are often poorly
delineated. To compound
the problem, the titles of supervisors are almost as varied as their roles.
Ben M. Harris attributed the variations in roles to differing theoretical perspectives:
Supervision, like any complex part of an even more complex enterprise, can be viewed in various ways and inevitably is. The diversity of perceptions stems not only from organizational complexity but also from lack of information and absence of perspective. To provide perspective, at least, the total school operation must be the point of departure for analyzing instructional supervision as a major function.
To varying degrees, many occupations outside education use the
services of supervisors, whether as office boss, telephone supervisor, floor
manager, construction supervisor, department-store head, or assembly-line
supervisor. These individuals carry out the task of supervision in the
original sense of the Latin word supervideo, “to oversee.” They
demonstrate techniques, offer suggestions, give orders, evaluate
employees’ performance, and check on results (products).
Historical Approaches
Supervision has gone through many metamorphoses. If we look at
some of the changes that have occurred in this field since the early days,
we can a bit arbitrarily establish historical time frames for the evolution of
instructional supervision. In analyzing the development of most aspects of
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education, we should keep in mind what we might call axioms.2 Applied to
curriculum development, these could include “School curriculum not only
reflects but is a product of its time” and “Curriculum changes made at an
earlier period of time can exist concurrently with curriculum changes at a
later period of time.” The same axioms are valid if we substitute the word
supervision for curriculum.
Supervisory behaviors and practices are affected by political, social,
religious, and industrial forces existent at the time. Furthermore, traces of
supervisory behaviors and practices that existed in earlier days of our
country can be found even today among highly divergent practices and
behaviors. History is forever with us. However, supervision has come a long
way since colonial days, as we can see in Table 6, which outlines the major
periods in the historical development of supervision.
Not until the establishment of organized schools did the need for
specialized school supervisors materialize. When parents, “dames,” and
tutors instructed youngsters in the home, these people were, in effect, both
teacher and supervisor, but as the population grew, early colonists realized
that they needed some formal structure for the education of their young.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed the famed Old Deluder
Law of 1647, which required communities with 50 or more families to
provide instruction in reading and writing and communities with 100 or
more families to establish a grammar school. Thus, educated young people
would not be led astray by the Old Deluder, Satan. Note the powerful effect
of the church on early education in the colonies. Though church and state
are more or less separated today, strong controversy still exists about the
role of religion in the public schools. As schools became established, local
school committeemen fulfilled the function of supervisors by giving
directions, checking for compliance with teaching techniques, and
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evaluating results of instruction by the teachers in their charge. In an
authoritarian mode, early supervisors set strict requirements for their
teachers and visited classrooms to observe how closely the teachers
complied with stipulated instructions. Departure from these instructions
was cause for dismissal.
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Table 6: Major Periods in the Historical Development of Supervision
PeriodType of Supervision
Purpose Persons Responsible
1620 – 1850
InspectionMonitoring rules, looking for deficiencies
Parents, clergymen, selectmen, citizen’s committees
1850 – 1910
Inspection, Instructional improvement
Monitoring rules, helping teachers improve
Superintendents, principal
1910 – 1930
Scientific, bureaucratic Improving instruction and efficiency
Supervising principals, principals, general and special central-office supervisors, superintendents
1930 – 1950
Human relations, democratic
Improving instruction
Principals, central-office supervisors
1950 – 1975
Bureaucratic, scientific, clinical, human relations, human resources, democratic
Improving Instruction
Principals, central office, supervisors, school-based supervisors
1975 - 1985
Scientific, clinical, human relations, human resources, collaborative/collegial, peer/coach/mentor, artistic, interpretive
Improving instruction, increasing teacher satisfaction, expanding students understanding of classroom events
Principals, central-office supervisors, school-based supervisors, peer/coach/mentor
1985 – present
Scientific, clinical, human relations, human relations, human resources, collaborative/collegial, peer/coach/mentor, artistic, interpretive, culturally responsive, ecological
Improving instruction, increasing teacher satisfaction, creating, learning communities, expanding students’ classroom events, analyzing cultural and linguistic patterns in the classroom
School-based supervisors, peer/coach/mentor/principals, central-office supervisors
Even in the eighteenth century, school people were anxious to
appear at their best when visited by selectmen. Walter Herbert Small
observed that as early as 1733 schools provided a dinner for
schoolmasters, selectmen, and certain public officials on the occasion of
the selectmen’s visit to their schools.4 Taking a cue from their eighteenth-
century predecessors, today’s school faculty, administrators, and board
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members commonly extend the hospitality of an initial breakfast or dinner
meeting to visiting teams from regional accrediting associations.
Universal public education for boys and girls, poor and rich, was a
phenomenon of the nineteenth century. The common elementary school
grew rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century, imitating Prussian
and military models of graded organization. Horace Mann, secretary of the
Massachusetts State Board of Education from 1837 to 1848, pushed the
cause of public schools and created the first normal school in the United
States for training teachers. He defined the state’s responsibility for public
education. During the same period, Henry Barnard, first secretary of the
Connecticut State Board of Education, was also promoting public education.
The number of high schools in the country grew rapidly, spurred by
political, social, and educational developments of the time. Among these
developments were the creation of the first high school in Boston in 1821,
the Massachusetts law of 1827 requiring a high school with a two-month
program in towns of 500 or more families, and the famous Kalamazoo,
Michigan, case of 1874 that affirmed the right of communities to levy taxes
for secondary education. New institutions, new programs, expanded
student bodies, and increased population called for new ways of
supervising instruction. Selectmen, citizens’ committees, clergy, and
parents gave way to trained educators.
In the nineteenth century, local committees began looking to
professionally trained persons to administer and supervise the schools. As
early as 1837, Buffalo, New York, and Louisville, Kentucky, employed school
superintendents. By 1870, some twenty-nine school systems were headed
by superintendents.5 Superintendents in the early nineteenth century
spent considerable time visiting and supervising schools, although their
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focus changed from looking for deficiencies meriting dismissal of teachers
to helping teachers overcome difficulties.
Inspection, often derided as “snoopervision,” was the prevailing
approach in the nineteenth century. The appeal to authority was very
evident in the widely reproduced set of
instructions to teachers in Harrison, South Dakota, in 1872, shown in Table
6. To some extent school supervisors, or inspectors as they are called in
other countries, continue to fulfill their tasks with an authoritarian
approach. The classic illustration of this—although not entirely accurate—is
France, of which it has often been said that the Minister of Education can
tell on any day exactly where each teacher is in any textbook anywhere in
the country. Such a situation implies a highly structured form of instruction
and a very centralized system of supervision.
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FIGURE 1.1 1872 Instruction to the Teacher. Source: Board of Education, Harrison, South Dakota, and Leo W. Anglin, Richard Goldman, and Joyce Shanahan Anglin, Teaching: What It’s All About (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), p. 11. Reprinted by permission of Board of Education, Harrison, South Dakota.
Our system of education does not begin to approach foreign systems
in degree of centralization, but during the 1970s and 1980s we saw
pronounced centralization at the state and school district levels. Some
states either recommended or mandated minimal competencies or
standards that students were (and to an increased degree still are)
expected to achieve in certain subjects at each grade level. Some school
districts, engaging in a process called curriculum alignment, specified
detailed objectives that students were expected to master during each
marking period in each subject. Learning activities and test items based on
the objectives were designed for each marking period. In states that
conducted student-assessment programs, local curriculum guides were
keyed into the objectives assessed on the states’ examinations. In the early
1990s, the movement toward centralization slackened somewhat, resulting
in a degree of decentralization and empowerment of teachers and
laypeople.6 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, we see a
strong revival of centralization efforts, especially to be noted in the form of
state and national standards and assessment programs.
As the population grew and schools increased in number, the
superintendent could no longer supervise individual schools closely. In the
late nineteenth century, principals and central office supervisors shared a
major part of the burden of everyday supervision. With the advent of the
Industrial Revolution and the influence of people like Frederick W. Taylor
and Max Weber in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
scientific and bureaucratic approaches to supervision replaced inspection.
Scientific management and efficiency were buzzwords of the new
approach. The assumption of these strategies was that if organizations
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followed established principles for efficiency, production would presumably
be high. Supervisors had only to ensure the rigorous application of the
principles.
While Taylor was expounding on scientific management, Weber was
promoting the concept of bureaucratic management of organizations as the
ideal model for achieving efficiency and productivity. The model provided
for a hierarchy of authority and responsibility—from the chief executive
officer at the top of the pinnacle to the lowliest worker at the bottom. The
bureaucratic model became the pervasive organizational structure in all
human institutions—business, industry, government, social organizations,
church, and schools. In fact, the bureaucratic model has become so
entrenched in our lives that bureaucracy has become, under some
circumstances, a derogatory term.
Thus in the early part of the twentieth century, the bureaucratic
model of organization became firmly rooted in our school systems with the
superintendent at the top and the teacher at the bottom. In between came
a whole echelon of generalist and specialist personnel. Although
philosophies, attitudes, and operating procedures have changed since the
early twentieth century, the bureaucratic model remains the dominant form
of school organization despite predictions of an “emerging, pluralistic,
collegial” concept of administrative organization7 and despite sporadic
efforts by some organizations to apply principles of shared management as
advocated by W. Edwards Deming.
Describing the attitude of scientific managers during the early 1900s,
William H. Lucio and John D. McNeil said that “teachers were regarded as
instruments that should be closely supervised to insure that they
mechanically carried out the methods of procedure determined by
administrative and special supervisors.”9 “Scientific” supervisors look for
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fixed principles of teaching, drawn from research that can be prescribed for
teachers. The teachers’ performances can then be judged on how well they
follow the instructional principles in their teaching. To supervisors of this
persuasion, teaching is a science rather than an art, and they believe that
by following a prescribed set of rules, teachers are bound to be successful.
Does this sound familiar to you in the new millennium?
Following research on instruction carried out through the 1960s and
1970s, many educators still perceive teaching as a science whose
component skills—generic competencies—can be identified, learned, and
mastered.
Under the influence of people like Elton Mayo, Mary Parker Follett,
Kurt Lewin, Ronald Lippitt, Ralph K. White, Kenneth D. Benne, Paul Sheats,
and Warren G. Bennis in the mid-twentieth century, supervision turned in
the direction of human relations and group dynamics. Stress on the
democratic process and the application of the behavioral sciences
commanded the attention of supervisors. No longer did supervision
constitute handing down methods to teachers and then monitoring their
performances. Collaboration and partnership between supervisors and
teachers became important. Supervisors began to realize that their success
was dependent more on interpersonal skills than on technical skills and
knowledge; they had to become sensitive to the behavior of groups and
individuals within groups. They became more aware that they must
respond to needs as determined by the people they served—the teachers—
as opposed to satisfying their own needs based on their supposedly
superior judgments. The prefix super- of supervision declined in
importance. The word supervision itself became modified by such words as
collaborative, cooperative, democratic, and consultative. This change of
focus has continued and intensified into the present.
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What we are seeing today is an amalgamation of practices and
attitudes. True, we can find holdovers of the inspection mentality and we
can still encounter the boss–employee mind-set, but we are experiencing
more cases of cooperation and collaboration between supervisors and
teachers than in the past. We find a definite acceptance of the idea that
instructional supervisors are employed to help teachers build on their
strengths, improve, and remain in the profession instead of probing
teachers’ deficiencies and seeking their dismissal. We are finding principles
of scientific supervision within a clinical yet supportive context. Even within
a scientific framework, supervisors place heavy reliance on human
relations. We also note that teachers themselves are acting as
instructional supervisors to their peers. We are also experiencing newer
focuses of supervision—human resources, artistic, interpretive, and
ecological approaches. We will return to these later in the text. Before
exploring the newer directions in instructional supervision, it is helpful to
note that of the three older approaches mentioned, today’s supervisors
would reject the first two and minimize the third.
The Authoritarian-Inspectorial Approach. Professional
supervisors realize that teachers, as professionals, can be persuaded
but not coerced; many times, they have better answers to their own
problems than do the supervisors.
Laissez-faire. To some, supervision is a laissez-faire task.
Supervisors who are thus inclined agree with many teachers that in
the case of supervision, less is better. Nondirective in their approach,
they may visit the teachers’ classrooms or stop by the teachers’
lounge for a cup of coffee. They tend to consider a classroom visit
and an appearance in the teachers’ lounge as equally important;
some might rate the chat in the lounge as more important. They see
their task as giving the teacher a benevolent pat on the back now
and then.
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Group Dynamics. To others, supervision is a never-ending exercise
in group process. They see improvement of instruction as a
continuing exercise in human relations. Viewing themselves as
resource persons to the group, they spend considerable time
fostering a positive group climate, using social affairs to establish a
happy, cooperative frame of mind among teachers. They hope that
after a period of deliberation, groups will reach consensus on points
under discussion.
Neither an authoritarian nor a laissez-faire approach is adequate or
suitable for today’s schools, nor is an exclusively group-process approach.
Supervisors may favor group processes, but they will be called on to work
with both groups and individuals. They must be mindful that many of the
innovations in schools are products of experimentation by one or two
individuals rather than groups.
Varying Interpretations
This discussion, however, still leaves us unsure of what supervision is
or should be. To create a sharp, clear-cut definition of supervision is
extremely difficult, as acknowledged by Ralph L. Mosher and David E.
Purpel:
The difficulty of defining supervision in relation to education also stems, in large part, from unsolved theoretical problems about teaching. Quite simply, we lack sufficient understanding of the process of teaching. Our theories of learning are inadequate, the criteria for measuring teaching effectiveness are imprecise, and deep disagreement exists about what knowledge—that is, what curriculum—is most valuable to teach. . . .When we have achieved more understanding of what and how to teach, and with what special effects on students, we will be much less vague about the supervision of these processes.
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Looking at the way specialists in supervision have defined the term
may help us in our quest for a viable definition. Let’s sample some past and
present definitions. William H. Burton and Leo J. Brueckner gave
supervision a broad interpretation, viewing it as a technical service
requiring expertise, the goal of which is improvement in the growth and
development of the learner. Stressing the helping nature of supervision,
Jane Franseth early on stated, “Today supervision is generally seen as
leadership that encourages a continuous involvement of all school
personnel in a cooperative attempt to achieve the most effective school
program.” Ross L. Neagley and N. Dean Evans pointed to the democratic
nature of modern supervision in their definition:
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Modern supervision is considered as any service for teachers that eventually results in improving instruction, learning, and the curriculum. It consists of positive, dynamic, democratic actions designed to improve instruction through the continued growth of all concerned individuals—the child, the teacher, the supervisor, the administrator, and the parent or other lay person.
Contemporary definitions of supervision stress service, cooperation,
and democracy. In this book, you will find the emphasis placed on
instructional supervision. Harris wrote: “Supervision of instruction is what
school personnel do with adults and things to maintain or change the
school operation in ways that directly influence the teaching process
employed to promote pupil learning.”14 Robert J. Alfonso, Gerald R. Firth,
and Richard F. Neville offered a slightly different definition: “Instructional
supervision is herein defined as: Behavior officially designated by the
organization that directly affects teacher behavior in such a way as to
facilitate pupil learning and achieve the goals of the organization.”
John T. Lovell, in revising the earlier work of Kimball Wiles, looked at
instructional supervisory behavior as behavior that “is assumed to be an
additional behavior system formally provided by the organization for the
purpose of interacting with the teaching behavior system in such a way as
to maintain, change, and improve the design and actualization of learning
opportunities for students.”16 Don M. Beach and Judy Reinhartz, rejecting
the use of the word help in defining supervision, see “supervision as a
complex process that involves working with teachers and other educators
in a collegial, collaborative relationship to enhance the quality of teaching
and learning within schools and that promotes the career-long
development of teachers.”
Note how many definitions focus on (1) the behavior of supervisors
(2) in assisting teachers (3) for the ultimate benefit of the student. Robert
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D. Krey and Peter J. Burke offered a comprehensive definition of
supervision:
Supervision is instructional leadership that relates perspectives to behavior, clarifies purposes, contributes to and supports organizational actions, coordinates interactions, provides for maintenance and improvement of the instructional program, and assesses goal achievements.
Advocating the replacement of “supervision as it is now practiced” by
what they refer to as “normative” supervision, Thomas J. Sergiovanni and
Robert J. Starratt saw supervision as taking place in schools that are “true
learning communities,” where values, norms, and ideas are shared by
supervisors, teachers, and students.
John C. Daresh and Marsha A. Playko offered a concise definition,
viewing supervision as “the process of overseeing the ability of people to
meet the goals of the organization in which they work.” Jon Wiles and
Joseph Bondi viewed supervision as “a general leadership role and a
coordinating role among all school activities concerned with learning.”
Emphasizing process and function of supervision rather than title or
position for the purpose of improving student learning, Carl D. Glickman,
Stephen P. Gordon, and Jovita M. Ross-Gordon pictured those in supervisory
roles as applying “certain knowledge, interpersonal skills, and technical
skills to the tasks of direct assistance, group development, curriculum
development, professional development, and action research that will
enable teachers to teach in a collective, purposeful manner uniting
organizational goals and teacher needs.” You will note recurring themes,
some similarities, and some differences in emphasis or perspective among
the many definitions of supervision.
Supervision, as presented in this text, is conceived as a service to
teachers, both as individuals and in groups. To put it simply, supervision is
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a means of offering to teachers, in a collegial, collaborative, and
professional setting, specialized help in improving instruction and thereby
student achievement. The words service and help should be underscored,
and they are used repeatedly in this text.
Problems That Complicate The Supervisory Role
Continuing Diversity of Conceptions of Supervision
Realizing that the term supervision by itself is subject to many
different interpretations, some specialists in the field have found it
expedient to add modifiers. Thus in the literature we encounter
administrative, clinical, consultative, collaborative, developmental,
differentiated, educational, general, instructional, and peer. Each of the
adjectives offers a special interpretation of the term supervision.
Administrative supervision covers the territory of managerial
responsibilities outside the fields of curriculum and instruction. General
supervision is perceived by some as synonymous with educational
supervision and by others as that type of supervision that takes place
outside the classroom. Differentiated supervision allows teachers to choose
the types of developmental activities in which they will engage.
Whereas educational supervision suggests responsibilities
encompassing many aspects of schooling, including administration,
curriculum, and instruction, instructional supervision narrows the focus to a
more limited set of responsibilities, namely, supervision for the
improvement of instruction. Clinical, consultative, collaborative,
developmental, and peer supervision are subsumed under instructional
supervision.
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Whether the supervisor perceives teaching as a science or as an art
further colors the supervisor’s role. The supervisor who follows a scientific
approach believes that generic teaching skills can be identified and that all
teachers at all levels should be able to demonstrate them. Such a
supervisor believes that those skills can be described, observed, and
analyzed. The supervisor who follows an artistic approach believes that
teaching is a highly individualized activity that bears the stamp of the
teacher’s unique personality. This type of supervisor believes that the
entire setting for instruction, the persons involved in the teaching act, and
the general atmosphere of the classroom must be considered.
Some specialists would maintain that supervisors should devote all or
most of their emphasis to a single approach or type of supervision. Others,
including ourselves, see room for a more eclectic approach. We return to
varying conceptions of supervision in later chapters of the book.
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Differing Conceptions of Effective Teaching
Some specialists ascribe difficulty in defining supervision, as did
Mosher and Purpel, to a lack of understanding of the teaching process,
impreciseness of the criteria for assessing teacher performance, and lack of
agreement on what should be taught.23 Those who follow an interpretive
or hermeneutic approach to supervision look at the unique characteristics
of a particular learning situation and, with the teacher, seek to interpret the
events that have taken place during a lesson.
Some supervisors look at process, that is, the demonstration of
teaching skills. Some focus on product, such as test scores of students.
Others include the teacher’s personal and professional attributes in their
description of effective teaching. Certain supervisors are partial to
particular models and styles of teaching. Some smile, for example, on
discovery learning and frown on lecturing. Some favor direct instruction of
entire groups, some champion cooperative learning, and others advocate
individualized instructional techniques.
These differing conceptions of what constitutes effective teaching
make the supervisory process difficult for both the teacher and the
supervisor. Many research studies on effective teaching have been
conducted in recent years. These studies furnish partial answers to some of
the pedagogical questions. They do not, however, provide answers to
differing philosophical premises held by supervisors.
Mandates from the State Level
Over the past three decades, many state legislatures have passed
laws calling for sweeping reforms in public education. They have raised
teacher salaries, mandated state testing of teachers, instituted on-the-job
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assessment, established student-assessment programs, prescribed aspects
of the curriculum, and ordered annual evaluations of all school personnel.
State departments of education have implemented and administered
the many reforms mandated by their legislatures and state boards of
education.
Although room has remained for some local decision making,
increased direction from the state level has certainly reduced the flexibility
of local school systems to make decisions based on their assessment of
local needs and on their own philosophies of education. Local school
systems have had to give priority to state mandates. After meeting state
requirements, they may and often do go beyond the state directives.
The supervisor’s role is heavily affected by state mandates: by state
tests for both teachers and students, by state model instruments for
evaluating teachers, by state-developed curriculum guides, and by state
specification of teaching competencies. Supervisors who are in
disagreement with state reforms are faced with intrarole conflicts. State
assessments of student achievement, for example, are almost exclusively
cognitive in nature. The supervisor who has a commitment to affective and
psychomotor as well as cognitive learning will feel uncomfortable with
testing restricted to only the cognitive domain. Nevertheless, the
supervisor owes it to the teachers to help them produce high student test
scores. State mandates have established priorities for local school
personnel, including supervisors. For a brief period, state mandating
peaked, and the responsibility for administration, supervision, curriculum,
and instruction shifted more to the local schools. Movements toward
decentralization, including site-based or school-based management,
teacher empowerment, and parental participation in decision making,
placed more responsibility and authority on the individual schools and less
on the district and state levels. However, as the first decade of the twenty-
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first century unfolds, we are seeing renewed stress (in both its meanings of
“emphasis” and “tension”) on setting standards and testing coming from
the district and state levels, and, as is the case of the No Child Left Behind
Act of 2001, the national level.
Tensions between Teachers and Administrators/Supervisors
The public and, to an increasing degree, the profession have
expressed dissatisfaction with student achievement and with incompetent
teaching. Increased emphases on student achievement, accountability of
teachers, and teacher competence have brought about increased pressure
for evaluation of teacher performance. Consequently, evaluation of
teaching has loomed large in recent years. Teachers, especially through
their organizations, have not wholeheartedly embraced current processes
of evaluation. They have raised valid questions concerning the
competencies on which they will be judged, who will do the evaluating, how
the evaluation will be conducted, and what use will be made of the results.
Teachers question the reliability of the data collected on their
performances and the competence of the administrators or supervisors in
making assessments. Furthermore, they want to be involved in the creation
of the evaluation process. The inability to separate supervisory service from
evaluation, adds to the tensions. Teachers, as a rule, welcome real
supervisory help. Yet many of them view supervisors with contempt,
feeling, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly, that teachers are more
capable than supervisors or that supervisors have nothing of value to offer
them. Many teachers simply ignore supervisors, choose not to ask for their
help, and avoid opportunities to work with them.
Many years ago, Arthur Blumberg pictured the tensions between
supervisors and teachers as a “private cold war.”24 To some extent
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progress in empowerment of teachers, human relations skills, and
principles of collegiality and collaboration have reduced conflicts between
supervisors and teachers but have not completely eliminated them.
Negative, fearful, or hostile attitudes are symptoms of the malaise
brought on by uncertainties about the role, function, and effectiveness of
the supervisory profession. Great needs exist to clarify duties and
responsibilities of supervisors, to discover the most effective techniques
and skills, and to identify who the supervisors are.
Who Are The Supervisors?
In the traditional meaning of supervision, anyone who oversees the
work of another is a supervisor. Hence, every administrator is ipso facto a
supervisor. If we limit the concept of supervision to management of
resources and personnel, we are on firm ground in labeling the
administrator a supervisor. But if we delimit supervision to the means of
improving the curriculum and instruction, we may not conclude that every
administrator is an instructional supervisor.
Logically, it would seem that any school official who assists teachers
in improving curriculum and instruction is a supervisor. In practice,
however, some individuals in the school system are charged with the
management of resources and personnel as their primary task, whereas
others are assigned the improvement of curriculum and instruction as their
major function.
Many arguments are waged over whether the building principal, for
example, is a supervisor. Although principals have responsibility for the
curriculum and instruction of the school, supervision of those aspects is
only one of their many tasks. Unfortunately, instructional supervision is
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often a secondary task for many school principals, who commonly lament
that they do not have time to devote to curriculum and instructional
leadership because they are too busy with the day-to-day operation of the
school.
We hasten to add that in those small schools throughout the country
that employ several teachers and a principal with no one to assist him or
her, the principals do, by necessity if not by desire, perform the function of
instructional supervisor. We might more accurately refer to those principals
by a title used in earlier days, supervising principals, to distinguish them
from instructional supervisors. We are witnessing, however, a desire for
change, if not change itself, in the role of the building principal—from
manager to instructional supervisor. The profession has begun to recognize
the individual school as the locus of change, placing responsibility for
instructional leadership squarely on the principal. Though some principals
will continue to devote less time to instructional supervision than to other
duties and may, if possible, delegate much of the task to others, more
principals are accepting responsibility for the role of instructional
supervisor. Developments, such as state-mandated curricula, evaluation
systems, merit pay, and career ladder programs, further push the principal
into fulfilling instructional supervisory responsibilities.
“By their fruits ye shall know them” is more pertinent in the world of
supervision than “by their titles ye shall know them.” Controversy swirls
around the issue, concerning whether supervisors should assume
administrative responsibilities. We should note at this point that the issue
is not ordinarily reversed—that is, there is seldom discussion of whether
administrators should assume supervisory responsibilities. For both legal
and practical reasons, administrators already have these responsibilities.
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As we try to identify supervisors, it might be helpful to depict the
degree to which administrators and supervisors take on the role of guiding
instructional improvement. Figure below illustrates how we can chart
varying degrees A full-time administrator (e.g., superintendent of schools;
many principals, especially of large schools) is deep into budgeting,
transportation, staffing, pupil personnel services, and public relations. He or
she devotes little or no time to curricular and instructional supervision but
delegates that duty to others. Some administrators, however, although
preoccupied with managerial problems, expend some time and energy on
instructional supervisory activities. They may visit—and in many cases
they are required by law to visit—teachers in their classrooms, observe
their teaching, make judgments, and offer advice. When they behave in
this fashion, administrators become supervisors, if only for a portion of their
time. Some school personnel who by job description are classified as
supervisors are charged with or assume on their own initiative
administrative duties such as annual assessments of teacher performance.
When they accept managerial tasks, they join the ranks of the
administrators. Finally, those personnel who spend all of their time and
efforts in helping teachers directly with the improvement of instruction may
be called full-time instructional supervisors. Thus, with a nod to Izaak
Walton, we have the Compleat Administrator on one side of the spectrum
and the Compleat Supervisor on the other.
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Types of Supervisors
The American system of education is a confusing diversity of systems
that confounds people from abroad who attempt to study it. In fact, at
times our system even perplexes Americans. This confusion extends to the
provision of special services like supervision.
Figure 1.2 Continuum of Supervisory Responsibility.
In this module, we talk about a person whom we call the supervisor.
Unless otherwise specified, we are talking about the instructional
supervisor. In agreement with many specialists, we include curriculum
supervision within the context of instructional supervision.
Because of the great diversity in roles and duties of supervisors, we
urge the reader to keep in mind the distinction between the supervisor,
with supervisor emphasized, and the supervisor, with the emphasized. In
discussing the supervisor we make the assumption that principles and
practices of supervision may apply generally, to most but not all situations
and not to all persons who wear the hat of supervisor. This book
concentrates on the supervisor. Were we to talk about the supervisor, we
would be conveying the erroneous notion that there is a single, accepted
role that supervisors can, do, or should play. The effort to identify a single
role applicable under all circumstances is akin to searching for that elusive
will-o’-the wisp, the best model of teaching.
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Full-timeAdministrators
Administrators Who SupervisePart-time
Supervisors Who Administrate Part-time
Full-time Supervisors
Supervisors are special service personnel to be found on the staffs of
administrators at the state, district, and school levels. In administrative
parlance these service personnel are staff employees, whereas the
administrators, equipped with the mantles of status and authority, are line
employees. Staff employees are hired by and responsible to the line
employees. Line employees below the top position (e.g., superintendent)
are hired by and responsible to other line employees higher up in the chain
of command.
Supervisors are often referred to as auxiliary personnel or staff.
Although titles and responsibilities of these auxiliary personnel differ from
state to state and from school district to school district, we can identify the
major types of supervisors. Figure 1.3 shows some of the varieties of
supervisors on different levels. Included among the types of supervisors are
administrators who spend a portion of their time in supervising instruction
as well as full-time supervisors. Figure 1.2 also distinguishes generalist
supervisors, whose duties cut across disciplines and grade levels, from
specialist supervisors, whose responsibilities fall within a subject or grade
level.
State Supervisors the chief supervisor on the state level is the
assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. Although this
position may bear other titles, this person’s responsibility is to supervise
the entire curricular and instructional program of the public schools in the
state, with the help of staff members. The assistant superintendent
interprets state department of education and state legislative mandates
concerning education and is directly responsible to the state
superintendent of public instruction. The assistant superintendent’s office
frequently directs teachers in the preparation of certain curricular materials
and often supervises textbook adoptions. That office also provides
consultant service to the schools, sponsors conferences on curriculum and
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instruction, and acts as liaison with the federal government in the
preparation of proposals for grants for federal projects. This office
encourages experimentation in curriculum design and instructional
techniques.
The assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction is aided
by a staff of specialists who may be designated supervisors, directors,
consultants, or coordinators. Frequently these include specialists in
curriculum and instruction, such as directors or supervisors of elementary,
middle, and secondary education. These staff members aid in fulfilling the
assistant superintendent’s tasks. They generally confine themselves,
however, to providing leadership at their own levels.
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Well-developed state departments of education provide a variety of
specialists in particular areas or disciplines, such as exceptionalities,
reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. These supervisors
operate throughout the state in their own areas of specialization, assisting
teachers, suggesting materials, giving advice, and demonstrating effective
methods of teaching their specialties. They are generally responsible to the
director of elementary education or director of middle schools, junior high
schools, or senior high schools, depending on their level of responsibility.
We sometimes find, for example, a supervisor of elementary language arts
and a supervisor of secondary language arts on the assistant
superintendent’s staff.
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Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction
Director of Elementary Schools Director of Middle Schools
Director of Junior High Schools Director of Senior High
Schools Director of Community Colleges Assistant
Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction General
Supervisors Director of Instruction Director of Elementary
Schools Director of Middle Schools Director of Junior High
Schools Director of Senior High Schools Director of Pupil
Personnel Services Assistant Principal for Curriculum and
Instruction Curriculum Coordinator Curriculum Assistant
Lead Teacher Team Leaders Department Heads Grade
Coordinators Curriculum Consultants Curriculum
Coordinators Supervisors of Special Programs Supervisors of
Subject Areas Curriculum Consultants Curriculum
Coordinators Supervisors of Special Programs Supervisors of
Subject Areas
GENERALISTS
SPECIALISTS
FIGURE 1.3 Types of Supervisors
Local Supervisors The presence and effectiveness of the supervisor is felt
more keenly on the local than on the state level. The state supervisors’
areas are so large and responsibilities so many that they cannot possibly
make the rounds of all the schools and teachers demanding services.
Consequently, local supervisors become key people in the school system.
District Level On the school-district level, supervisors are on the staff of
the local school superintendent. They are referred to in the literature and in
practice as central-office personnel, a designation that distinguishes them
from school-based personnel employed to serve in particular schools.
On the central-office staff, customarily an assistant superintendent
for curriculum and instruction or sometimes a director of instruction
provides curricular and instructional leadership throughout the local
district. This key local official aids teachers in developing materials,
encourages experimentation and research, provides schools with up-to-
date materials and consultants, leads the district in the continuous task of
curriculum development, and meets with teachers and administrators on
problems of curriculum and instruction.
Helping the assistant superintendent are personnel of various types.
Often these include one or more general supervisors, responsible for
supervision from kindergarten through twelfth grade. They are frequently in
the schools assisting individual teachers and groups of teachers in a variety
of fields. These persons are familiar with learning theory, adolescent
psychology, methods of handling groups and individuals, and new ways to
organize for instruction. Some of the smaller school districts limit their
central-office personnel to positions of this type.
Larger school systems employ supervisors or directors of elementary,
middle, and secondary education. Whereas the general supervisor must be
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spread thin over the entire school system, these three specialists may
concentrate on their individual levels.
Large school districts often provide a variety of supervisors or
consultants in special fields, such as reading, guidance, foreign languages,
and vocational education. Some of the special-area supervisors divide their
time between the elementary, middle, and secondary levels as, for
example, in art, music, and physical education; others confine their work to
one level. These specialists are in a strategic position for effecting change
in individual classrooms. They have expertise in a particular field and may
devote their full time and energies to the development of curriculum and
instruction in their specialties. They can be knowledgeable about the latest
content, materials, and methods in their fields.
School Level Within the individual schools of a district are people who
could be labeled supervisors. Often a school will employ an assistant
principal whose main duty is the supervision of curriculum and instruction.
This person devotes full energies to developing the curriculum of his or her
own school and helping teachers improve instruction.
Curriculum coordinators or lead teachers are sometimes found in the
individual schools either as assistants to or replacements for the assistant
principal for curriculum and instruction. Their task is to assist teachers with
curricular and instructional problems and to give leadership to the
development of the curriculum and the improvement of instruction. Team
leaders, grade coordinators, and department heads in the individual
schools can, should, and sometimes do serve as supervisors. With the
team-staffing patterns followed by many schools, the person who heads
instructional team plays a significant role as supervisor for that team. The
department head in middle, junior high, and senior high schools fulfills for a
department a supervisory function similar to that fulfilled by the team
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leader. Because elementary schools are ordinarily not departmentalized,
the grade coordinators for all sections of a grade level and the team
leaders for each section of a grade level serve as quasi-department heads
who carry supervisory responsibilities. In middle, junior high, and senior
high schools, we may find both team leaders and department heads, with
team leaders within departments responsible to the department heads.
School-based supervisors should lead in curriculum development,
assist teachers in the production of instructional and curricular materials,
arrange for staff development, and help teachers improve their teaching
methods. Principals have the obligation of freeing their coordinators and
leaders so that they will not become bogged down, as so often happens,
with either administrative details of running their grades, teams, or
departments or with full-time teaching schedules. These activities can
prohibit them from giving adequate time to instructional and curricular
leadership. Newer practices in supervision enlist the services of peers,
coaches, and mentors in the process to help avoid this overload.
Unlike state supervisors, whose interaction with district-based and
school-based supervisors is infrequent, central-office supervisors work
frequently and collaboratively with school-based supervisors and teachers
to assist in achieving district goals. You may question whether those
personnel shown in Figure 1.3 who hold line or administrative positions are
truly supervisors—for example, the assistant superintendents and directors
on both state and district levels who often work only minimally with
teachers. The assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and
frequently the directors on the local district level occupy line rather than
staff positions. Depending on the school district, line personnel may or may
not work directly with teachers. In Figure 1.3, however, these line officials
are classified as supervisors because they devote at least part of their time
to supervisory duties. Whereas some specialists in supervision restrict their
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concept of a supervisor to those staff persons who work full-time directly
with teachers, others include within their concept line officers who have
responsibilities for curriculum and instruction. Because many line
administrators do engage in supervision, they should be trained in
supervision as are those who pursue full-time careers in supervision. It is an
unfortunate commentary on the licensing process in many states that the
requirements for preparation of administrators and supervisors, which are
often minimal, are identical. By taking a handful of college courses in
educational administration and supervision, a person can become certified
in both administration and supervision.
However delightful such an arrangement is for prospective
administrators and supervisors, as one preparation program opens up two
job markets, differentiation in training programs for administrators and
supervisors remains a serious need of the profession. The training
requirements of these two related careers are not identical.
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Tasks of Supervision
We can gain a clearer insight into the field of supervision by focusing
our attention on what supervisors actually do. As long ago as 1922, William
H. Burton listed the tasks he saw as pertinent to the supervisor. These
tasks, which some might label arenas, are shown here:
1. The improvement of the teaching act.
2. The improvement of teachers in service.
3. The selection and organization of subject matter.
4. Testing and measuring.
5. The rating of teachers.
Burton’s listing has been viewed as “the first modern statement and
concept” of supervision. This list looks surprisingly current when we
examine the numerous tasks that today’s supervisors actually perform.
Writing a half century later, Harris enumerated ten tasks of
supervision in the following rather detailed list:
Task 1. Developing curriculum.
Task 2. Organizing for instruction.
Task 3. Providing staff.
Task 4. Providing facilities.
Task 5. Providing materials.
Task 6. Arranging for in-service education.
Task 7. Orienting staff members.
Task 8. Relating special pupil services.
Task 9. Developing public relations.
Task 10. Evaluating instruction.
Harris classified tasks 1, 3, and 4 as preliminary; 6 and 10 as
developmental; and the others as operational.28 You will note both
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similarities and differences in the Burton and Harris listings. We can find
supervision specialists who would be willing to accept either compilation of
supervisory tasks. On the other hand, we can find experts in the field who
would reject both lists. Those who view supervision as a one-to-one, clinical
relationship between the teacher and supervisor would eliminate many of
the tasks from both lists. Those who view supervision as a field distinct
from administration would delegate administrative tasks like scheduling,
staffing, and public relations to the administrator rather than to the
instructional supervisor.
Holding that “traditional supervisory practices of helping and
evaluating individual workers” are “no longer useful except with respect to
contract decisions,” Karolyn J. Snyder viewed the supervisor’s task in the
following light:
The primary supervisory task is to develop professional learning communities, in work teams, that not only acquire new knowledge and skills but also learn how to study and respond exceptionally well to their natural work and learning environments.
Snyder perceived “the new work of the supervisor” as “building the
energy mass, school by school and team by team.”
What is more revealing about the roles and functions of supervisors
are the statements of expectations as shown in job descriptions of various
school personnel. Were we to compare job descriptions across school
systems, we would inevitably discover differences in the duties assigned to
personnel with the same titles. What is universally true throughout school
systems, however, is that much is expected of all supervisors.
A Model of Supervision
The supervisor plays a variety of roles within certain domains, and
the expertise demonstrated in the particular domains is derived from a
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number of bases or foundations. One way to explain the dimensions of
supervisory behavior is in the form of a conceptual model. Figure 1.3
depicts the concept of supervision followed in this text.
The model shows three large domains or territories within which
supervisors work (instructional development, curriculum development, and
staff development) and the four primary roles of the supervisor within those
domains (coordinator, consultant, group leader, and evaluator). The
domains and roles rest on a foundation—the supervisor’s knowledge and
skills.
The model conveys the notion that supervision is both service-
oriented and dynamic. The supervisor serves teachers dynamically by
playing all or any of the roles within all or any of the domains. The two-
headed arrows connecting the three domains show that all are interrelated.
For example, a supervisor who works as a group leader in curriculum
development (say, in mathematics) may at the same time work in the
domain of instructional development (e.g., by helping teachers try out new
techniques of presenting geometric concepts) and/or the domain of staff
development (e.g., by conducting seminars on new techniques).
A conceptual model can clearly reveal the concepts held by the
person who designs it. Thus one could take this same basic design but
follow a different set of assumptions. Some people, for example, might take
issue with the three domains, cut them into one or two, or expand them
beyond three. They might eliminate supervisory duties in curriculum
development, leaving only instructional development and staff
development. They might restrict supervision to instructional development
and limit it to clinical supervision. They might remove instructional
development as well as curriculum development, allowing only staff
development to remain (e.g., if they feel that staff development means
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assistance to teachers in improving both personal and professional
qualities, then instructional development becomes a by-product or part of
staff development). In restricting the domain of supervision to staff
development alone, these people might perceive the roles of the supervisor
as dual: consultant to individual teachers and consultant to groups of
teachers. Some might go even further and restrict the supervisor to one
role: consultant to individual teachers, or simply trusted colleague.
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INSTRUCTIONALTECHNOLOGY
CURRICULUMTHEORY
GROUP INTERACTION COUNSELING SOCIOLOGY DISCIPLINE EVALUATION
MANAGEMENT LEARNING THEORY HOSTORY OF EDUCATION
COMMUNICATION THEORY
PERSONALITY THEORY
PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
Figure 1.4 A Conceptual Model Supervision
In presenting the model of supervision shown here, we have taken
the position that supervisors do and should work in all three domains and
carry out at least the four roles. This model can also accommodate the
required administrative functions of supervisory personnel, through the
four roles already charted. In contrast, whereas this text presents a
generalized supervisory model, Bernadette Marczely offered a
differentiated conception of supervision encompassing a number of models
from which supervisors may choose on a “case-by-case basis.”
Domains of Supervision
As we’ve seen, the supervisor exercises various roles within each of
three domains: instructional, curricular, and staff development. That is, the
supervisor acts as coordinator, consultant, group leader, and evaluator to
assist teachers in the improvement of instruction, curriculum planning, and
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InstructionalDevelopment
StaffDevelopment
CurriculumDevelopment
DOMAINS OF SUPERVISION
ROLES OF THE SUPERVISOR
Coordinator Consultant Group Leader Evaluator
DOMAINS OF SUPERVISION
personal and professional growth and development. In doing so, the
supervisor must bring to bear a wide repertoire of knowledge and skills.
Floyd C. Mann referred to the skills needed by supervisors as a “skill-mix,”
consisting of technical, managerial, and human relations skills.32 Alfonso,
Firth, and Neville have also given attention to the skill-mix necessary to
instructional supervision.
Edward Pajak headed a study on identification of supervisory
proficiencies sponsored by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development. By reviewing the literature on supervision and surveying
instructional leaders, Pajak affirmed twelve domains, with relevant
knowledge, attitudes, and skills in each domain. These domains and their
definitions are as follows:
Community Relations—Establishing and maintaining open and
productive relations between the school and its community;
Staff Development—Developing and facilitating meaningful
opportunities for professional growth;
Planning and Change—Initiating and implementing collaboratively
developed strategies for continuous improvement;
Communication—Ensuring open and clear communication among
individuals and groups through the organization;
Curriculum—Coordinating and integrating the process of
curriculum development and implementation;
Instructional Program—Supporting and coordinating efforts to
improve the instructional program;
Service to Teachers—Providing materials, resources, and
assistance to support teaching and learning;
Observation and Conferencing—Providing feedback to teachers
based on classroom observation;
Problem Solving and Decision Making—Using a variety of
strategies to clarify and analyze problems and to make decisions;
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Research and Program Evaluation—Encouraging experimentation
and assessing outcomes; Motivating and Organizing—Helping
people to develop a shared vision and achieve collective aims;
Personal Development—Recognizing and reflecting upon one’s
personal and professional beliefs, abilities, and action.
Eleven of these twelve domains—essentially ways of working with
individuals and groups within the schools—are discussed in this volume.
The external aspects of the supervisor’s job—that is, community relations,
which is certainly an important domain not only for supervisors but also for
administrators, teachers, and other school personnel—find less treatment
here. For help in the domain of community relations, the reader should
consult some of the literature on public relations, building community
support, and power structure. Building positive community relations is
extremely important for every school person. However, the designated
administrator should assume the primary task of leadership in community
relations and allow the instructional supervisor to concentrate on the task
for which he or she is uniquely equipped: service to teachers.
Varying Roles
The roles supervisors play vary from locality to locality and from state
to state. They are defined by the superintendents or principals to whom the
supervisors are responsible and, as happens in most positions of
leadership, by the supervisors themselves. Although some variation will be
found in the roles supervisors may fulfill, more than likely the service-
oriented supervisor will perform at varying times each of the four roles
shown in the model.
Coordinator The supervisor serves as a coordinator of programs, groups,
materials, and reports. It is the supervisor who acts as a link between
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programs and people. He or she knows the disparate pieces of the
educational process and directs the actions of others to make the pieces
blend. As a director of staff development, the supervisor plans, arranges,
evaluates, and often conducts in-service programs with and for teachers.
Consultant The supervisor serves in a consulting capacity as a specialist
in curriculum, instructional methodology, and staff development. In this
capacity, he or she renders service to both individual teachers and groups.
At times, the supervisor may simply furnish necessary information and
suggestions. At other times, he or she may help teachers define, set, and
pursue goals. The supervisor should be a prime source of assistance to
teachers wishing to improve either their generic or specialized teaching
skills. Though some will disagree with us, we believe the supervisor-
consultant should be able to demonstrate a repertoire of teaching
strategies.
Group Leader The supervisor as group leader works continuously to
release the potential of groups seeking to improve the curriculum,
instruction, or themselves. To perform this role the supervisor must be
knowledgeable about group dynamics and must demonstrate leadership
skills. The supervisor assists groups in consensus building, in moving
toward group goals, and in perfecting the democratic process. As a group
leader, the supervisor seeks, identifies, and fosters leadership from within
the group.
Evaluator As an evaluator, the supervisor provides assistance to teachers
in evaluating instruction and curriculum. The supervisor helps teachers find
answers to curricular and instructional problems identify research studies
that may have a bearing on their problems, and conduct limited research
projects. Additionally, the supervisor helps teachers evaluate their
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classroom performance, assess their own strengths and weaknesses, and
select means of overcoming their deficiencies.
Foundations of Supervision
The foundations of supervision (see Figure 1.4) are areas of learning
from which the supervisor derives expertise. The large number of areas
from which a knowledgeable and skilled supervisor must draw suggests the
need for a broad training program in preparation for work as a supervisor.
When we study the conceptual model of supervision, with its
domains, roles, and foundations, we can deduce competencies that
supervisors should be able to demonstrate. Supervisors should possess (1)
certain personal traits and (2) certain types of knowledge and skills.
Personal Traits The literature on supervision is remarkably silent on what
personal characteristics are necessary for successful supervisory behavior.
Perhaps this silence can be attributed to one or more of the following
reasons.
1. Personal characteristics can be inferred from the skills supervisors
should possess. Thus, if supervisors are expected to demonstrate a
high degree of skill in human or interpersonal relations, they should
exhibit human and humane traits like empathy, warmth, and
sincerity.
2. Educational research has been notably unsuccessful in identifying
personal qualities common to all successful administrators and
supervisors. The presence of generally valued personal traits in a
leader does not guarantee success on the job, nor does the absence
of these traits ensure failure. Because the search for universal traits
has been unproductive, the experts have concentrated on the more
certain requisite knowledge and skills.
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3. Personal traits necessary for success in positions of leadership appear
so obvious that they need no elaboration. Some specialists in the
field may feel that a compendium of supervisory traits is similar to
the oath that Boy Scouts take, promising to be trustworthy, loyal,
helpful, friendly, and so on.
4. The search for personal traits is a somewhat dated activity at a time
when researchers are attempting to identify competencies that
school personnel should demonstrate.
Nevertheless, despite these encumbrances, let’s briefly consider the
question of personal characteristics needed by supervisory personnel. The
successful supervisor is in constant contact with people and should possess
those personal traits of warmth, friendliness, patience, and a sense of
humor that are essential not only to supervision but also to teaching. As a
service-oriented agent for improvement, the supervisor must be imbued
with the spirit counselors refer to as “the helping relationship,” the desire
to give of oneself to be of assistance to others. Beyond this, the supervisor
needs the kind of persuasiveness and infectious enthusiasm that inspires
teachers to want to make changes for the better.
The supervisor who is a helper to teachers is able to effect a
democratic environment in which the contributions of each participating
member are valued. Above all, the supervisor needs to possess a
predisposition to change and must constantly promote improvement. If
supervisors, whose chief responsibility is to bring about improvements, are
satisfied with the status quo, they can be sure that the teachers will be,
too. The supervisor must be able to live with change and help teachers
adapt to the changing needs of society and of children and youth. To
accomplish this mission, the supervisor should be able to work effectively in
both one-to-one relationships and in groups.
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Knowledge and Skills Although personal traits of supervisors are not
often discussed, we can find an abundance of statements about the
knowledge and skills successful supervisors need. There is general
agreement that supervisors should have A sound general education
program.
A thorough pre-service professional education program.
A major field of study.
A solid graduate program in supervision.
Three to five years of successful teaching at the elementary, middle,
or secondary school level.
In pre-service and in-service training programs, supervisors should develop
grounding in
Learning theory and educational psychology.
Philosophy of education.
History of education, especially of curriculum and instructional
development.
The role of the school in society.
Curriculum development.
Instructional design and methods.
Group dynamics.
Conferencing and counseling.
Assessment of teacher performance.
Lovell and Wiles pointed to necessary knowledge and skills when they
wrote that supervision is
Releasing human potential
Leadership
Communications
Coordinating and facilitating change
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Curriculum development
Facilitating human development.
Alfonso, Firth, and Neville drew implications for instructional
supervisory behavior from organization leadership, communication,
decision making, and change theories.
Read the table of contents of any textbook on supervision and you
will see the broad knowledge and special skills demanded by the
profession. To identify knowledge and skills required for effective
supervision, we may also turn to Figure 1.4 and analyze the domains, roles,
and foundations presented in the conceptual model. To perform effectively,
the supervisor must possess broad knowledge of both a general and
professional nature and be able to translate that knowledge into skillful
practice. At appropriate points in this book, you will encounter further
discussion of the knowledge and skills essential to instructional supervisors.
SUMMARY
The roles and titles of supervisory personnel vary among the school
systems of the nation. Supervision is defined in this text as a service
provided to teachers for the purpose of improving instruction, with the
student as the ultimate beneficiary.
A supervisor is a trained auxiliary or staff person whose primary
function is the provision of service according to a conceptual model. The
model presented in this chapter portrays the supervisor as fulfilling the
roles of coordinator, consultant, group leader, and evaluator within the
domains of instructional, curricular, and staff development.
The supervisor should possess personal traits that will enable him or
her to work harmoniously with people and sufficient knowledge and skills to
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perform all functions effectively. Leadership, interpersonal, and
communications skills appear to be especially important to successful
supervision. Supervisors should possess a judicious mix of technical,
managerial, and human relations skills.
Supervisors perform a wide variety of tasks, which may or may not
include administrative duties. The focus of this book is on instructional
supervision, which is an inclusive term to signify service to teachers in
developing the curriculum, instruction, and themselves.
Questions for Discussion
1. Are there other domains of supervision besides those shown in Figure
1.4 or cited from the Pajak study?
2. Do supervisors have roles besides those shown in Figure 1.4?
3. Are there other foundations of supervision besides those shown in
Figure 1.4?
4. How would you describe the current state of instructional
supervision?
5. Are there too many supervisors in our school systems? Support your
response.
Reflective
1. Cite at least four definitions of supervision to be found in the
bibliography of this module, show their similarities and differences,
state whether you agree or disagree with each definition, and give
reasons for your position.
2. Formulate your own definition of supervision.
3. State your position on the following questions:
Is the principal a supervisor? Why or why not?
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Would our system of education be better if the U.S. Department of
Education employed inspectors to check on instruction throughout
the country? Give reasons for your answer.
Would our system of education be better if state departments of
education regularly sent out inspectors to check on instruction
throughout their states? Why or why not?
How much teaching experience is essential for a person to be an
effective supervisor?
4. Write a short paper, using references in the bibliography at the end of
this chapter, expanding on the list of qualifications of supervisors
discussed in the chapter.
5. Write a short paper, using references in the bibliography at the end of
this chapter, expanding on the functions, roles, or tasks of
supervisors discussed in the chapter. See, for example, Beach and
Reinhartz,
6. Following the concept of a skill-mix, list specific (a) technical, (b)
managerial, and (c) human relations skills that you believe are
needed by a supervisor.
7. Write an analysis of your own knowledge, skills, and personal traits as
they bear on the role of the supervisor.
Describe your strengths and indicate areas in which you feel you need
improvement.
Application
1. Examine the staffing pattern of a school system you know well and
list as many different types of supervisors as you can discover.
2. Design your own conceptual model of supervision.
3. Poll a sample of teachers and inquire (a) whether they know what
supervisory help is available to them and (b) how they perceive the
functions of each supervisor.
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4. Identify at least two improvements in curriculum and/or instruction
that have been made in a particular school system in the last three
years and determine what role, if any, a supervisor played.
5. Inquire of several teachers how often supervisors visited them in their
classrooms during the past school year. Identify the supervisors by
title, such as assistant principal for curriculum, supervisor of
language arts, and so on.
6. Interview and obtain a job description, if available, for one or more of
the following supervisors and write a brief description of their chief
duties based on the interview:
a. Assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction
b. General supervisor
c. Team leader
d. Grade coordinator (grade chairperson)
e. Lead teacher
f. Department head
g. Director of elementary, middle, junior, or senior high schools
7. Describe supervisory assistance available to teachers in your field
from the following sources:
a. State department of education
b. Cooperative (regional) educational service agencies (intermediate
school district level)
c. School superintendent’s office
8. Outline a desirable university training program for supervisors and
compare it with a training program with which you are familiar.
9. Tape an interview with a supervisor on the central-office staff and
write a summary covering the following points: (a) How does the
supervisor perceive his or her role? (b) What are major problems in
supervision as he or she sees them? (c) What training is required for
the job?
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10. Outline the state requirements for certification as (a) a school
principal and (b) a supervisor. Write a brief summary contrasting the
differences, if any, and comparing the similarities.
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TTESTEST ANDAND A APPLYPPLY Y YOUROUR K KNOWLEDGENOWLEDGE
1. What are the capabilities of a well-informed supervisor? Explain each.
2. What are the challenges that affect the administrative and supervisory activities in schools?
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