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

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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

36

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

37

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.

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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

51

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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