Sergiovanni & Starratt Framework for Supervision

Sergiovanni, T. J., & Starratt, R. J. (2007). Supervision: A redefinition (8th Ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.

Chapter 1: A Framework for Supervision

• Introduction
• Some Background
  • "The failure of students to learn in any given classroom is considered the failure of the teacher to find a way to enable the students to learn (p. 4)."
  • Policy mandates are pressuring schools to improve academic achievement. Teachers and teaching take the brunt of the blame. Consequently, teaching and supervision must be redefined in order to keep up with the political and societal pressures and demands. The focus becomes student learning.
  • "...unless teachers become sufficiently self-managing by accepting more responsibility for their own learning and development, the capacity of the school to provide needed help will be severely taxed (p. 5)."
  • Supervision is not done to or for teachers; it should be done with teachers.

• Both Role and Function
  • The authors define supervision as: "...engaging in such functions as observing teaching and providing helpful comments, helping teachers to reflect on their practice, teaching a demonstration lesson, suggesting items teachers might include in their portfolios, disaggregating test score data, and conducting formal evaluations of teaching as required by district or state policy (p. 5)."
  • The authors believe that teachers can also serve as supervisors. Teachers who serve in this role carry out the following functions. "Teachers, for example, engage in supervisory functions when they visit each other's classes to learn and to provide help, to critique each other's planning, to examine together samples of student work, to pour over the most recent test scores together, to puzzle together over whether assignments they are giving students are appropriate or whether student performance levels meet important standards, to share portfolios and to engage in other activities that increase their learning, the learning of their colleagues, and the quality of teaching and learning that students receive (p. 5)."
  • "Communities of practice are formed as teachers come together in a common effort to help each other teach and learn, to care for each other, and to work together in advancing student academic achievement (p. 5)."
  • A culture of supervision could occur in a community of practice.

• Leading and Learning Together
  • "But bringing together leadership and learning does not work well in promoting effective teaching and learning for students when the focus is only on meeting the learning needs and interests of teachers one at a time. This one-at-a-time approach is a great way to help teachers get smarter. But smart teachers and smart schools are not the same. A school gets smarter when what teachers learn and what teachers do are aligned with the school's purposes. A school gets smarter when the school itself is the prime beneficiary of learning (p. 6)."
  • "Learning that counts the most in a school is learning that supports the public good (p. 6)."
  • From reading this chapter, I get the impression that the authors define supervision as:
    • Supervision = professional development
    • Supervision = leadership
    • Supervision = administration

• Supervisors take on many roles. "Among them are colleague, teacher developer, keeper of the vision, and designed of learning opportunities. They will be able to maintain, as well, a healthy concern for quality control as they strive to push the learning curves of teachers and schools to the limit as they function as stewards on behalf of parents and students (p. 7)."

• A Framework for Supervision
  • "...the purpose of supervision is to help increase the opportunity and the capacity of schools to contribute more effectively to students' academic success (p. 7)."
  • "...instructional capacity, instructional quality, and student engagement are listed as the three pathways that supervisors travel in helping schools become more successful (p. 7)."
  • "...we believe that the heart of supervisory leadership is designing opportunities for teachers to continuously expand their capacity to learn, to care, to help each other, and to teach more effectively. We view schools as learning communities where students, teachers, and supervisors alike are learners and teachers depending upon the circumstances (p. 9)."

• Images of Supervision Scenario
• Scientific Management, Human Relations, and Neoscientific Management Supervision
  • Scientific management:
    • Characteristics: ACE - Accountability, Control, Efficiency (my acronym)
    • Requires "workers" who do not think or contribute but rather simply follow orders blindly
    • Recipe:
      • "Identify the best way.
      • Develop a work system based on this 'research.'
      • Communicate expectations to workers. 
      • Train workers in the system. 
      • Monitor and evaluate in order to ensure compliance (p. 15)."

• "Scientific management ideas carry over to school supervision when teachers are viewed as implementers of highly refined curriculum and teaching systems and where close supervision is practiced to ensure that they are teaching the way they are supposed to and that they are carefully following approved guidelines and teaching protocols (p. 15)."

• Human relations:
  • "...the productivity of workers could be increased by meeting their social needs at work, providing them with opportunities to interact with each other, treating them decently, and involving them in the decision-making process (pp. 15-16)."
  • "When it was applied to schooling, teachers were viewed as whole persons in their own right rather than as packages of needed energy, skills, and aptitudes to be used by administrators and supervisors. Supervisors needed to work to create a feeling of satisfaction among teachers by showing interest in them as people (p. 16)."
  • "The movement actually resulted in widespread neglect of teachers. Participatory supervision became permissive supervision, which in practice was laissez-faire supervision (p. 16)."

• Neoscientific management
  • "Neoscientific management shares with traditional management an interest in control, accountability, and efficiency, but the means by which it achieves these ends is far more impersonal (p. 16)."
  • "A more impersonal way to control what it is that teachers do is to introduce standardized criterion-referenced testing and to make public the scores by class and school. Since it is accepted that what gets measured gets taught, tests serve as an impersonal method of controlling the teacher's work (in neoscientific management)."

• Human Resources Supervision
  • "Human resources represents a higher regard for human need, potential, and satisfaction (pp. 17-18)."
  • "Leadership within this new kind of supervision was to be neither directive nor patronizing, but instead, supportive (p. 18)."
  • "Sensing negative assumptions and expectations, teachers are likely to respond in a negative way. This is an example of the self-fulfilling prophecy (p. 19)."
  • "Instead of focusing on creating happy teachers as a means to gain productive cooperation, the new supervision emphasis is on creating the conditions of successful work as a means of increasing one's satisfaction and self-esteem (p. 19)."

• Human Relations and Human Resources Supervision Compared
  • Human relations focuses on creating the environment for teacher happiness.
  • Human resources focuses on end results because achievements result in feelings of accomplishment.

• Revisiting the Supervisors