Sergiovanni & Starratt Sources of Authority

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

Chapter 2: Sources of Authority for Supervisory Leadership

• Introduction
  • The authors view supervisors as positions of power. They believe that their purpose is to get others to change their behavior. They use words like, "get people to change," "compliance," or "require."

• Some Background
  • Supervision = leadership
  • "'Authority' refers to power that is used to influence how teachers think and what strategy rests on the match that exists between the source of authority that the supervisor relies upon and the specifics that define the situation at hand (p. 25)."

• The Sources of Authority
  • Bureaucratic: punishment, compliance, mandates "When supervisory policies and practices are based on bureaucratic authority, teachers are expected to respond appropriately or face the consequences (p. 25)."
  • Personal: Involved decision-making, rewards, incentives "When supervisory policies and practices are based on personal authority, teachers are expected to respond to the supervisor's personality, to the pleasant environment provided, and to incentives for positive behavior (p. 25)."
  • Professional: "When supervisory policies and practices are based on professional authority, teachers are expected to respond to common socialization, accepted tenets of practice, and internalized expertise (pp. 25-26)."
  • Moral: "When supervisory policies and practices are based on moral authority, teachers are expected to respond to obligations and shared commitments and to the interdependence that comes from these shared commitments (p. 26)."
  • "Research, too, plays a role, but is viewed less as a script to be followed and more as a series of revelations that can inform the shared decision-making process (p. 27)."

• Bureaucratic Authority
  • Assumptions:
    • "Teachers are subordinates in a hierarchically arranged system.
    • Supervisors are trustworthy, but you can't trust subordinates very much.
    • The goals and interests of teachers and those of supervisors are not he same; thus, supervisors must be watchful. 
    • Hierarchy equals expertise; thus, supervisors know more about everything than do ordinary teachers.
    • External accountability works best (p. 27)."

• Strategies:
  • "expect and inspect"
  • Leader identifies needs and then determines intervention.
  • Emphasis and reliance on standards

• Impact:
  • Teachers become detached.
  • Loss of motivation
  • "Supervision becomes a direct, intense, and often exhausting activity as a result (p. 28)."

• Personal Authority
  • Assumptions:
    • "The goals and interests of teachers and supervisors are not the same. As a result, each must barter with the other so that both get what they want by giving something that the other party wants.
    • Teachers have needs; if these needs are met, the work gets done as required in exchange.
    • Congenial relationships and harmonious interpersonal climates make teachers content, easier to work with, and more apt to cooperate. 
    • Supervisors must be experts at reading the needs of teachers and handling people in order to barter successfully for increased compliance and performance (pp. 28 - 29)."

• Strategies:
  • Trading
  • "The strategy is to obtain compliance by trading psychological payoffs of one sort or another (p. 29)."
  • Congeniality but not collegiality
  • "The emphasis is less on meeting teachers' social needs and more on providing the conditions of work that allow people to meet needs for achievement, challenge, responsibility, autonomy, and esteem - the presumed reasons for finding deep fulfillment in one's job (p. 29)."
  • Human resources

• Impact:
  • Inspect - Extrinsic motivation
  • Teachers behave because of requirements
  • "Teachers become involved in their work for calculated reasons, and their performance becomes increasingly narrowed (p. 29)."

• "We believe there is ample evidence for the position that personal and bureaucratic sources of authority should do no more than provide support for a supervisory practice that relies on professional and moral authority. The reasons, we argue here and elsewhere in this book, are that psychologically based leadership and supervision cannot tap the full range and depth of human capacity and will. This source of authority cannot elicit the kind of motivated and spirited response from teachers that will allow schools to work well (pp. 29-30)."

• Professional Authority   

• With professional authority, teachers are viewed as professionals who must be able to reflect on their practice in order to construct knowledge about the practice in an everyday context.
• Assumptions:
  • "Teaching and learning contexts are different; thus, no one best way to practice exists.
  • 'Scientific knowledge' and 'professional knowledge' are also different; professional knowledge is created as teachers practice.
  • The purpose of scientific knowledge is to inform, not prescribe, the practice of teachers and supervisors.
  • Professional authority is not external but is exercised within the teaching context and from within the teacher.
  • Authority in context comes from the teacher's training and experience.
  • Authority from within comes from the teacher's professional socialization and internalized knowledge and values (p. 32)."

• Strategies:
  • "Supervisory practice that is based primarily on professional authority seeks to promote a dialogue among teachers that makes explicit professional values and accepted tenets of practice (p. 32)."

• Impact:
  • "Professional virtue speaks to the norms that define what it means to be a professional (p. 32)."
  • Accountability in professional authority is internalized in that peers hold one another accountable.

• Moral Authority
  • Assumptions:
    • "Moral authority is derived from the obligations and duties that teachers feel as a result of their connection to widely shared community values, assumptions, ideas, research frameworks, and ideals. When moral authority is in place, teachers respond to shared commitments and felt interdependence by creating communities of practice. And schools too take on the characteristics of communities (p. 32)."
    • Moral authority exists only within a community.

• Like professional authority, accountability in moral authority is internalized.

• Leading With Ideas
  • "Teachers create norms of accountability when they function as communities of practice that help each other, share student work, plan lessons together, and share the results. Further, they are committed to the idea that what they know and what they learn must be shared with others if it is to serve the common good (p. 33)."

• Accountability Writ Large

• Instructional Coherence
  • Is it possible to reach instructional coherence in a PDS? How would Sergiovanni's notions of supervision translate into preservice development? What elements do we have in PDS?
  • Newmann, F. M., Smith, B., Allensworth, E., & Bryk, A. S. (2001). Instructional program coherence: What it is and why it should guide school improvement policy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(4), p. 297.
  • The continuum:

• ESSPAR: Ideas in Action

• Distributed Accountability
  • "They create a climate of responsibility that stretches from an individual teacher in his or her classroom in a given school all the way to the central office (p. 39)."
  • The collective IQ: "An important challenge for supervision is to aggregate what teachers know, thus enlarging school intelligence and increasing the school's capacity to improve (p. 39)."
  • Instructional coherence creates distributed accountability.
  • Why it works - Sergiovanni's argument: "...a decentralized commitment to a basic principle of empowerment - teachers and others are encouraged to do what they think is right provided that what hey do embodies the values and purposes that are shared, serves the common good, and strengthens the character of teaching and learning (p. 40)."

• Trust First
  • Increase in trust = increase in collegiality
  • Trust does not equal agreement, but it does mean collaboration.
  • "Together, trust and collegiality immunize schools from the negative effects of disengagement and lack of commitment to what he school or school district is about and is trying to accomplish (p. 41)."

• Supervision II