16 School Supervision: Concepts & Theories

Dr.Harjinder Kaur

epgp books

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENT

 

1.     Introduction

2.    Objectives

3.    Concept of Supervision

4.    Scope of Supervision

5.    Types of Supervision

6.    Definition of School Supervision

7.    The Need for an Effective School Supervision

8.    Purposes of School supervision

9.    Scope of School Supervision

10.   Types of School Supervision

11.    Supervision Theories

12.   Development Approaches to Supervision

13.   Summary

 

 

1.  Introduction

Education is gaining more prominence in the affair more than ever before. It is seen as an answer of so many questions and solution to a myriad of problems. More funds are being committed to education both by the Governments and Private Citizens. There is therefore a greater demand for probity and accountability. The maintenance of standards and assurance of adequate measures of quality control are now the concern of all enlightened parents. The significance of school supervision has now come into the limelight.

 

2. Learning Outcome:

To define the concept of supervision;

  1.  To outline the types of supervision
  2. To evaluate  the scope of supervision;
  3. To define the meaning of school supervision;
  4. To recognise need and purposes of school supervision;
  5. To discuss the types and scope of school supervision;
  6. To apply theories of school supervision;

   3.  Concept of Supervision

Supervision is a way of stimulating, guiding, improving, refreshing and encouraging and overseeing certain group with the hope of seeking their cooperation in order for the supervisors to be successful in their task of supervision Ogunsaju (1983). Supervision is essentially the practice of monitoring the performance of school staff, noting the merit and demerits and using befitting and amicable techniques to ameliorate the flaws while improving on the merits thereby increasing the standard of schools and achieving educational goals. The term supervision is derived from word “Super video” meaning to oversee, Adepoju (1998). It is an interaction between at least two persons for the improvement of an activity. It is also a combination or integration of processes, procedures and conditions that are consciously designed to advance the work effectiveness of individuals and group. Adepoju (1998) defines school supervision as the process of bringing about improvement in instruction by working with people who are working with pupils. It has also been described as a process of stimulating growth and a means of helping teachers to achieve excellence in teaching. Supervision in school therefore is a vital process and combination of activities which is concerned with the teaching and improvement of the teaching in the school framework

 

However, from the meaning and definition, we can derive nature of supervision comprises of following properties:

1.  Supervision is a creative and dynamic expert technical service.

2.  It provides leadership with expert knowledge & superior skills.

3.  It promotes cooperative educational effort in a friendly atmosphere.

4.  It gives coordination, direction and guidance to teachers’ activities.

5.  It stimulates the continuous growth of teachers and development of pupils.

6.  It improves instruction and the teaching learning process.

7.  It helps in achievement of appropriate educational aims and objectives.

8.  It helps to decide and order execution and assists in improving instruction.

9.  It represents a portion of the whole enterprise of school management.

10.  It saves us from the victimization of soul killing administration

 

4. Types of Supervision:

There are two types of Supervision:

(a)  Autocratic

(b)  Democratic

 

(a) Autocratic Supervision:

In this type, the authority is centralised in the key person or head, who has been legally appointed to look after the organisation. The policies and techniques of the school programme are directed by him. Here, the authority and power may be delegated to the supervisors who are directly responsible to the head.

 

There is quick communication between the authority and supervisors so that they can be easily contacted and ordered to carry out definite directions. All suggestions and prescriptions of duties and activities come from one person and may be passed down, the line and performance is checked in the same manner upward. Supervisors are appointed in establishments as the inspectors.

 

Generally the inspectors visit individual teachers classes, meet them individually to solve their problems. Students are also assisted individually. The authoritarian leader remains in the focus of the group’s attention. He emphasizes their obedience.

 

Demerits:

In autocratic supervision conflict, friction and antagonism soon develop. There is repression of individual personalities and no attempt is made to utilize the intelligent and talent of the supervisors. There is great wastage of both talent and energy.

 

(b) Democratic Supe rvision:

Here authority is based on superiority of knowledge, skill and capacity and not on legal sanctions. There is decentralization of power. Every supervisor is required to contribute his best towards purposes and welfare of group.

 

The talents of all workers are utilized fully. There is maximum possible participation of all workers in determining policies, procedures and final evaluation. Each individual personality is respected and considered of supreme value. Equality is practiced in all matters; emphasis is placed on mutual relationship and respect for one another.

 

5. Scope of Supervision

The scope of educational supervision extends to all the areas of educational activity with the larger purpose of improving the product of education through the upgrading of the quality of instruction and other school practices. “Education is now conceived as a powerful social force for the development of personality and the values of the democratic social order. Democratic philosophy extends the scope of supervision to the ultimate goals and values of education determined democratically through the participation of all the people concerned with the educative process. Democracy requires supervision should be made more and more participatory and co-operative.” In India we believe, in democratic philosophy. So our conduct, behaviour and activities should be governed by the democratic philosophy of life. This is true of education and also educational supervision. Hence supervision should be a cooperative enterprise in which everyone has the right to contribute. Democratic supervision provides full opportunity to discussion, welcomes free expression of views and opinions, enlists participation of all persons and utilizes their contribution for the improvement of the teaching- learning situation and process.

 

So supervision is planned cooperatively by all educational workers. Its programmes are flexible and related to the situation, and include analysis and improvement of the situation, of the final product of education and of its own effectiveness.

 

Supervision employs various techniques such as observation, demonstration, visitation, workshops, seminars, conferences, teachers’ guides, handbooks of suggestions, professional journals and in-service education.

 

   Supervision continuously makes its best effort to evaluate and improve the work environment of the pupils and teachers with their help and community’s assistance and  cooperation.  It  also  continuously  maintains  an atmosphere  of  mutual trust, integrity, loyalty, freedom, goodwill, responsibility and self-direction.

 

6. Definition of School Supervision

Supervision of any school ordinarily refers to the improvement of the total teaching-learning situation and the conditions that affect them. It is a socialized functions designed to improve instruction by working with the people who are working with the students/pupils.

 

    Supervision can also be defined in terms of function and purposes for which it shall be used as a) skills in leadership, b) skills in human relation, c) skill in group process, d) skill in personnel administration and e) skill in evaluation.

 

7. The Need for an Effective School Supervision

Supervision is needed in order that the three components of the educative process, namely: the learner, the teacher, and the venue  or the school  functions effectively.

 

This can be done by giving priority or importance  to the learner  as the end-goal of the process which should be properly nurtured; it is the teacher and his enthusiastic package lesson that can best help in charting the destiny of the learner; and so that the school that serves as the venue for the learning experiences of the pupils should be designed conducively.  These three elements are indispensable in running a school for they are intertwined.  The absence of one element, the educative process would not be in an ideal perspective.

 

The four main functions of supervision succinctly reveal the necessity of supervision as flows:

1.) Administrative – supervision provides information about policy and procedures; acts as a communication channel for vertical and lateral contacts (sometimes also acting as a “buffer” between the worker and other systems); carries authority for making certain policy and procedural decisions; and is responsible to delegate both authority and power to the supervisor.

 

2.) Educational – supervision engages the worker in examination of practice, knowledge, skills, value and attitudinal issues. Through this examination of work, the worker can improve his/her ability to do the job effectively.

 

3.) Support – On-the-job stress comes from a variety of sources. It could be client- related, agency-related, and community-related. Accumulated stress can interfere both with learning and with service to clients, and the supervisor can provide support to reduce feelings of stress.

 

4.) Evaluation – The supervisor is required to establish expected performance standards and state methods that will be used to evaluate progress. The evaluation aspect of supervision can provide direction and support for ongoing development and learning, and also helps ensure quality and accountability of services.

 

8. Purposes of School Supervision

Manual (2001), the headteacher should visit teachers in their classes. The major concern of school supervision is the enhancement of the quality of instruction in schools. Harris (1963) perceived supervision as “what school personnel does with adults and things for the purpose of maintaining or changing the operations of the school in order to directly influence the attainment of the major instructional goals of the school. Supervision has its impact on the learner through other people and things” From the above, the role of supervision will include:

 

•  Deciding the nature and content of the curriculum

 

•   Selecting the school organizational patterns and materials that will enhance educational growth

 

•  Improvement of teacher effectiveness.

 

•  Ensuring that teachers are performing their duties as scheduled.

 

•  Improvement of the incompetent teachers.

 

•  Providing a guide for staff development.

 

•  Determining the effectiveness of the teachers’ classroom management.

 

•  Determining the ‘tone’ of the school.

 

•   Determining special abilities possessed by teachers and deciding whom to be transferred, retained, promoted or disengaged. The Head teacher is usually the supervisor within the school. He/She is foremost an instructional leader. However, there are many other managerial activities expected of him/her in the school. It is regrettable that many head teachers do not often see themselves in the supervisory role of promoting the quality of teaching and learning in schools rather they see their main roles to be those of teachers, administrators, and managers of personnel and finances, counsellors and disciplinarians for students, liaison with parents and school board, Ministry of education, and supervisors of academic areas of the institutions. In carrying out the role of a supervisor, the head teacher should be visible in all corners and crannies of the school and not hide away in his office all day long. In a school based supervision, the supervisor must

 

• help both new and experienced teachers with planning their schemes of work and lessons and counsel them regularly;

• have authority, and use it with the teachers, to set school level objectives, and to determine the school’s activities to achieve those objectives;

• collect teachers’ lesson plans regularly and comment on them;

• be accessible to both teachers and students and listen to their concerns and interact informally with them;

• trust their teachers and delegate authority to them; and

•  check regularly on the safety and welfare of teachers and students and take care of problems as they arise. Adhering strictly to the above amount to a systematic and efficient supervision, which will result in an effective and efficient school characterized by:

 

●  excellent achievement by many pupils in examinations.

●  excellent performance in games, sports, drama, debates, music, festivals etc

●  well ‘behaved’ pupils’; and

●   the success of past students.

 

9. Types of School Supe rvision

The type of school supervision that can be cited are in terms of:

1.) Laissez-faire type. This type of supervision utilizes 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. The teachers are left free; they are not to be imposed upon or directed.

 

2.) Coercive type. This type of supervision is the opposite of the laissez- faire.

The supervisor visits the teachers in order to observe them. The teachers acquired ready-made-procedure or standard prescribed by the supervisors.

 

3.) Training  and Guidance  type. 

This  type  of supervision emphasizes the improvements of teachers as well as her technique through direction, training and guidance.

 

10. Scope of School Supe rvision

1. Inspection. This is actually a study of school conditions, to discover problems or defects of the students, teachers, equipment, school curriculum, objectives and methods. This could be done via actual observation, educational tests, conference, questionnaires and checklists.

 

2. Research. This has something to do with incorporation of remedial measures to remove the weaknesses of the solution to solve problems discovered. The supervisor should conduct research to discover means, methods and procedure fundamental to the success of supervision. The solutions discovered are then passed on the teachers.

 

3. Training. This is acquainting teachers with solutions discovered in research through training. Training may take the form of demo nstration teaching, workshops, seminars, classroom observations, individual or group conferences, intervisitation, professional classes or the use of bulletin board and circulars, and writing suggestions in the supervision form.

 

4. Guidance.  Guidance  involved  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.

 

5. Evaluation. As an ultimate functions of supervision, evaluation appraises the outcomes and the factors conditioning the outcomes of instructions and to improve the products and processes of instructions.

 

Activities of Supervision. The activities logically falling under supervision can be enumerated as:

1.      Survey of the school system;

2.      Improvement of classroom teaching;

3.      In-service education of teachers;

4.      Selecting and organizing materials for instructions;

5.      Researching solutions to the problems of teaching;

6.      Determining the desirable physical condition of teaching and

7.      Performing semi- administrative duties.

 

11.  Supervision Theories

  Kurt Lewin is renowned for claiming: “there is nothing so practical as a good theory”. Theories allow us to make vast and complicated amounts of information into understandable concise pieces and to highlight the focal points of that vast amount of information. All mental health practitioners and their supervisors function according to at least one theory but very often many supervision theories and models. The supervisor’s challenge is to extend their appreciation of those theories to guide their supervisory work with practitioners.

 

   As supervision is an evaluative process, the theory or theories by which the supervisor chooses to use as a guide need credible and recognizable criteria. Patterson, (1986) proposed what he considered to be the six most vital proponents of a  theory:

  1. Preciseness and clarity: containing clear, consistent, unambiguous wording.
  2. Parsimony or simplicity: containing the minimum of assumptions necessary to explain the focus of the point.
  3. Comprehensiveness: regarding the use of the known data in that particular area of interest.
  4. Operationality: in that the hypotheses and concepts are expressed in clear, evaluative terms.
  5. Practicality: or useful to practitioners.
  6. Falsifiability: it is important that the theory can be disproved.

The following is a brief examination of psychotherapy-based theories, developmental models, social role models and eclectic or integrationist models of supervision.

 

a) Psychoanalytic

Psychoanalytic supervision is by far the oldest mainly because from its inception, psychoanalysis has addressed the concept of supervision. The supervisor assists the counselor to be open to the experience that can be considered similar to mirror therapy whereby the counselor learns the analytic attitude that includes such attributes as patience, trust in the process, interest in the client, and respect for the power and tenacity of client resistance. An assumption of the psychoanalytic supervision model is that the most effective way a counselor can learn these qualities in the supervisory climate is to experience these qualities directly from the supervisor in authentic setting i.e when he is involved in task of supervision.

 

b) Client cente red

Carl Rogers was concerned with the concept of supervision for trainee counselors, as he observed from early recordings of therapy sessions that the usual forms of learning were not effective in teaching student counselors the non-directive approach of person centered therapy. Supervisors soon became starkly aware of this.  Roger (in his client centered therapy) introduced us to concepts of listening and communicating our understanding of the experience with a client in such a unique way that many individuals were not familiar with prior entering into formal education in counseling.

 

  However, client centered therapeutic skills are more than listening and responding appropriately, they consist of the fundamental belief in the phenomenological process, that the issue of giving advice or instruction becomes superfluous. Therefore, client centered therapy and supervision is about stepping into the experience of the individual who chooses to be influenced, hence it becomes both a mirror and a paradox.  The successful client centered supervisor must therefore have a profound trust in the counselor, believing he has both the ability and motivation to grow and explore the therapy and the self. This must therefore mirror the trust that the counselor has in their clients to do likewise.

 

     The challenge with client centered supervision occurs when the process is experienced in the supervisory context, and evidence or behavior by the supervisee suggests that the supervisee actually has an inability to genuinely believe that their client has the ability to differentiate and move toward self-actualization. A counselor who finds this incongruous and therefore mirrors this in supervision with their supervisor will have difficulty providing the necessary environment for their clients to change with this process.

 

c) Cognitive-behavioral

Cognitive-behavioral supervision, proceeds on the assumption that both adaptive and maladaptive behaviors are learned and maintained through their consequences. As a result, CBT supervisors are more specific and systematic in their approach to supervision goals and processes than some of the other supervisory perspectives. The supervisory model of the cognitive behavioral therapist consist of building rapport, skill analysis and assessment, setting goals (for the supervisee), implementation of strategies, follow- up and evaluation. CBT supervisors accept part of the responsibility for supervisee learning, but define the potential of the counselor as the potential to learn, and therefore supervision is concerned with the extent to which the supervisee is able to demonstrate technical competency.

 

12. Developmental approaches to supervision

Developmental approaches fundamentally focus on how the counselor will change as they gain further training and supervised experience. Developmental supervision is based on two assumptions,   In the process of becoming competent, the counselor will progress through a number of stages that are qualitatively different from each other; each stage requires a qualitatively different environment for optimum growth to occur. Over the years literally dozens of supervisory theories have been put forth by numerous developmental psychologists attempting to improve on previous theories. The Stoltenberg Model identified four stages or levels:

  1. During the first level the counselor is dependent on the supervisor, by they lack in self- confidence, while imitating and endorsing categorical thinking with little real experience.
  2. Level two, is indicated by an increased awareness in the counselor and a striving for independence becoming more assertive with less imitation but with fluctuating motivation.
  3. Level three  is  indicative of the counselors/supervisee’s autonomy, becoming more insightful and motivated as the supervisor’s role now changes to being that of colleague.
  4. The fourth and final stage finds the supervisee confident with theirinterpersonal and cognitive skills culminating in a confident professional and is now on equal terms with their supervisor.

13. SUMMARY

Does fear or trust dominate relationships in your school’s classrooms? How well do supervisors listen to and respond to teachers? How well do teachers listen to and respond to students? How are problems identified and solved? “Supportive Supervision in Schools” is a guide for teachers and administrators who want to create good school climates and a school culture that encourages professional growth and development among staff members. It uses a conferencing method to allow teachers, administrators, and students to discuss and reflect upon what they are doing inside the school building.

 

Old ideas about leadership models have not been supported by empirical research and have not influenced the way school leaders and teachers do their work. This book points to specific skill areas that need attention. It specifies that the creation of supportive environments occurs in weekly individual and group conferences. The authors stress the importance of listening and speaking so that messages are not distorted or misunderstood and emphasize trust-building. Using actual examples, this work shows how to construct supportive environments and how to identify and resolve problems.

 

you can view video on School Supervision: Concepts & Theories

References

  • Mohanty,  J.  (2008).  Educational  Management  Supervision  School Organisation.
  • New Delhi: Neel Kamal Publications.
  • Aggarwal, Y.P. & Sachdeva, M.S. (2007). Educational Administration and Supervision. Ludhiana: Vinod Publications.

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