Supervision and Teacher Development

Supervision and Teacher Development

Supervision and Teacher Development

Introduction

Supervision as a field of study is complicated for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most important of these reasons is that a deep division exists within the field about whether the purpose of supervision is to provide administrative oversight or to support teachers' instruction. Another reason is that scholarship having to do with supervision does not exist as a well-demarcated body of literature and research, but can often be found within other related educational fields, including curriculum. Yet another reason is that supervision, both as a practice as well as a field of study, extends across the full range of a teaching career, and assumes various forms to address the needs and interests of teachers at varying stages of their professional development. Nevertheless, because specific models of supervision have been developed and widely researched, and because supervision is an important aspect of many roles in educational settings, it warrants consideration as a field of study (Glickman, 2008).

Discussion

The Purpose of Supervision

History appears to be the best explanation for the schism that has developed in the field of supervision between what can be described as it's administrative and its instructional support purposes. The administrative purpose derives from monitoring and inspection practices recognized as formal supervisory responsibilities in the United States since the earliest schools in the original colonies. Beginning with committees of selectmen who visited those schools to make sure that teachers were living up to community expectations, to the inspection of schools in the country's growing cities by superintendents and later as school systems grew larger by principals and district central-office personnel, administrative oversight has existed to ensure the quality of teaching. The goal of such oversight has been to assess the quality of the teaching at any given time and, as Daniel and Laurel Tanner point out, has since colonial times also had improvement of instruction as an important goal (Glickman, 2008).

For administrative supervision, such improvement of instruction is best addressed at a systems level. Good instruction at the classroom level depends on having high-quality components in other parts of the school or district system. An example of such a systems component is a formal curriculum aligned for scope and sequence across grades and subject areas, and perhaps even requiring teachers to implement prescribed lessons. The administrative supervisor's role is one of monitoring that this curriculum is being implemented in classrooms. Another example of the systems approach that characterizes administrative supervision is the use of a teacher evaluation of observation checklist to note the presence or absence of specific teaching behaviors. The administrative supervisor uses this checklist as the basis for an assessment of teachers' competence against the standard implicit in the checklist items.

The Hunter model that was widely used in the 1970s and 1980s provides a good illustration of administrative supervision. In that model, a seven-step lesson design sequence is accompanied by a checklist that administrators use during classroom observations to document the use of each of the ...