WEEK 6

Today we will look at the challenges that Superintendents face as they deal with curriculum leadership and implementation. We will also look at the issue of supervision of teachers and the options which are available.

Definitions of Curriculum

The word curriculum refers to a group of related courses offered by an educational institution. This definition, however, proves unsatisfactory to leaders involved in the development of school programs. A more encompassing definition of curriculum is "a goal or set of values, which are activated through a development process culminating in classroom experiences for students." (Wiles & Bondi, (1993). Curriculum development, a guide to practice. Macmillan).

Curriculum as a field of study emphasizes that the school must be viewed as more than the mere sum of its parts, but rather in its entirety as an organic educational program. During the last one hundred years a set of principles, theories, and approved practices has emerged for regarding the school in such a fashion.

Curriculum development is a set of coordinated activities for designing student learning experiences. It is a logical process that begins with clear goals that reveal value preferences and when formalized, these value preferences are referred to as educational philosophies or learning theories (Wiles & Bondi, 1993). Before beginning curriculum development, for example, questions such as:

• What learner outcomes should we promote?
• How do students learn?

Wiles and Bondi describe a cyclical model to guide the process of development. Through analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation, curriculum developers set goals, plan experiences, select content, and assess outcomes of school programs

Mission Statement for Curriculum Development

At the district or top administrative level of the school structure, a mission is often discussed among a select few, after which a mission statement is written and subsequently communicated to individual school sites. Each school site then has the responsibility of reviewing the mission statement provided by the district and deciding upon ways to make it have meaning for them.

It would be ideal if teachers were included in writing the mission statement on the district level, but it is still possible to own the professional development plan on the school level. A school level plan for professional development must be developed and the entire faculty and staff of the school need to be involved.

"Staff development efforts are likely to have short-term and isolated benefits at best in the absence of school-level norms for continuous professional growth…But schools do not function in a vacuum; they too are influenced by the context in which they are embedded." (McLaughlin, 1991)

The district's role in school-level professional development must not end with the communication of the mission statement. The district's role continues as it enables the educational leaders and teachers at the school level to become involved in the self-assessment needed to identify the issues to be addressed by professional development activities at the school-level.

Once issues are defined, school and individual plans need to be written that will help to direct the actual selection, planning, and delivery of professional development activities. Only by encouraging participation by the would-be participants of the professional development activities will the resulting plan reflect the diversity of the administration, faculty, staff, and ultimately the students of the school and the district.

Summing It All Up

Please review this article What School Boards and Superintendents Can Do to Support Student Achievement. What else can school boards do for the schools they opereate? Here is a site which has several articles devoted to what School Boards can do Please read through ALL of the articles found here.

A few more thoughts about Professional Development

"Today's schools face enormous challenges. In response to an increasingly complex society and a rapidly changing, technology-based economy, schools are being asked to educate the most diverse student body in our history to higher academic standards than ever before." (Linda Darling-Hammond, Teacher Learning That Supports Student Learning http://www.ascd.org/pubs/el/feb98/extdarl.htm

"The nation's schools are more racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse than at any other point in history" (ERIC Clearinghouse, 1995). If teachers are to be asked to appreciate the diversity of the student population in their classroom and in the school, the school and the district must also appreciate and enhance the diversity of its teacher population. This diversity must be appreciated and encouraged to enhance the community of learners in the school and in the district, not merely acknowledged. This appreciation of diversity must ultimately be an integral part of the teacher and leadership training programs at our colleges and universities. "It is clear that caring and competent teachers are vital to the success of each of these initiatives and…that preservice and inservice teachers professional development must change to equip teachers to meet these challenges." (ERIC Clearinghouse, 1995)

Professional development strategies that succeed in improving teaching share several features (Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, 1995). They tend to be:

• experiential, engaging teachers in concrete tasks of teaching, assessment, and observation that illuminate the processes of learning and development;
• grounded in participants' questions, inquiry, and experimentation as well as professionwide research;
• collaborative, involving a sharing of knowledge among educators;
• connected to and derived from teachers' work with their students as well as to examinations of subject matter and teaching methods;
• sustained and intensive, supported by modeling, coaching, and problem solving around specific problems of practice; and
• connected to other aspects of school change. These approaches shift from old models of "teacher training" or "inservicing" to a model in which teachers confront research and theory directly, are regularly engaged in evaluating their practice, and use their colleagues for mutual assistance.

The mission of professional development takes different forms in different contexts but all professional development needs to adhere to the basic principles to insure effectiveness. A list of ten best basic principles as set forth by the U. S. Department of Education's Professional Development Team is found here

Evaluation and Supervision of Instruction Options

It is the responsibility of superintendents to arrange for the evaluation of all school personnel. In a public school setting this is often delegated to school principals. In large Adventist schools this is often given to principals also. However, in many cases in Adventist schools, the work of supervision and evaluation of teachers falls to the superintendent.

What is supervision and evaluation and what are the benefits? Our Educational Administration program offers a whole course on supervision of instruction and so we will only cover the basic concepts of this very important aspect of dealing with teachers.

First what are the benefits of evaluation? Well there are many.

• Evaluation opens up and improves communication between supervisors and teachers.
• Evaluations can be used as a counseling tool
• Evaluations help supervisors rate themselves and work toward improvement.
• Evaluations are a means of assessing the needs of the school system.
• Evaluations can motivate employees to improve their performance.

And what models of evaluation exist?. There are many ...and include such names as:

1. Interpersonal Intervention Model (Arthur Blumberg)
2. Artistic Approach Model (Eliot Eisner)
3. Technical Model (K.A. Acheson & M.D. Gall)
4. Decision-Making Model (Madeline Hunter)
5. Coaching Model (B. Joyce & B. Showers)
6. Developmental Model (Carl Glickman)
7. Cognitive Coaching Model (Arthur Costa & Robert Garmston)

CLINICAL SUPERVISION (Technical Model)

I have chosen to have us look only at ONE model. That is the Clinical Model of Supervision which seems to be most often practised in SDA schools. The use of the term "clinical supervision" to denote a method-specific model of supervising instruction was originated in the 1950s and over the intervening years there have been various interpretations offered by educators with respect to clinical supervision.

Morris Cogan has defined it as: "the rationale and practice designed to improve the teacher's classroom performance." It takes its principle data from the events of the classroom. The analysis of these data and the relationship between teacher and supervisor form the basis of the program, procedures, and strategies designed to improve the students' learning by improving the teacher's classroom behavior.

Sergiovanni and Starratt feel that instructional supervision using the clinical method "refers to face-to-face encounters with teachers about teaching, usually in classrooms, with the double-barreled intent of professional development and improvement of instruction."

Flanders claims that clinical supervision is . . . a special case of teaching in which at least two persons are concerned with the improvement of teaching and at least one of the individuals is a teacher whose performance is to be studied . . . it seeks to stimulate some change in teaching, to show that a change did, in fact, take place, and to compare the old and new patterns of instruction in ways that will give a teacher useful insights into the instructional process.

Finally, drawing on these and other definitions, Goldsmith, et al., have defined clinical supervision as . . . that phase of instructional supervision which draws its data from first-hand observation of actual teaching events, and involves face-to-face (and other associated) interaction between the supervisor and teacher in the analysis of teaching behaviors and activities for instructional improvement.

Basically, then, the clinical supervision model "is a highly personalized strategy" dealing expressly with the improvement of a teacher's classroom performance as an instructor.

The clinical supervision model consists of definitive cycles and steps wherein the supervisor and teacher work closely together in order to determine what aspects of the teacher's classroom performance are to be observed--for one of the basic principles of the model is to provide the teacher with answers to questions that he or she has about his or her teaching; they also decide on the specific procedures to be used in gathering the data in the classroom and the criteria for assessing the progress toward these mutually-arrived-at objectives. The cycles of the model and it's phases as outlined by Cogan are:

Phase 1. Establishing the teacher-supervisor relationship.

Phase 2. Planning with the teacher.

Phase 3. Planning the strategy of observation.

Phase 4. Observing instruction.

Phase 5. Analyzing the teaching-learning processes.

Phase 6. Planning the strategy of the conference.

Phase 7. The conference.

Phase 8. Renewed planning.

Goldhammer, et al., state that the role of the supervisor encompasses three basic areas: administrative, curricular,and instructional. With respect to the instructional component of a supervisor's responsibilities, these authors have heeded the counsel that Cogan gives concerning the possibility of varying the number of steps of this model of supervision, that is: "It should be noted at once that certain phases of the cycle may be altered or omitted, or new procedures instituted. . . ."; their version of the clinical supervision model comprises only five stages:

1. pre-observation conference

2. observation

3. analysis and strategy

4. supervision conference

5. post-conference analysis

2. Psychological Considerations

While Cogan acknowledges the part that the teacher's psyche plays in his or her teaching, he feels that it isn't within the realm of clinical supervision to treat any problems arising in this area. He states that "[c]linical supervision is neither counseling nor therapy . . . [but that] . . . the domain of the clinical supervisor is limited to the level of observable classroom behavior." Goldhammer and his fellow authors, however, refute Cogan's assertion that

. . . supervision should only attempt to modify surface behaviors, which predictably would be amenable to change, and should not attempt to affect Teacher's "underlying identity" despite the certainty that no matter how seemingly superficial, all behaviors are expressions of that identity.

They state that instructional supervision cannot "live by substance alone" and that not only the issues of supervision, but the manner in which supervision is conducted determines it's efficacy; they also feel that "it is often self-defeating to treat teaching as though is were somehow disembodied and independent of the teacher doing it." Supervisors should be cognizant of the teacher's overall psychological condition, not just those sets of emotions and perspectives associated with specific aspects of classroom teaching. As one tends to have good days and bad days--with a set of emotions that can range from the depths of depression to the heights of contentedness--there exists the real possibility that seemingly insignificant temperament shifts, any of which might be caused by something completely outside of the scope of the teacher's professional life, will have a direct effect on the conditions surrounding a supervision encounter. Finally, Goldhammer, Anderson, and Krajewski aver that clinical supervision doesn't "aim simply to modify behaviors as though they were disembodied. On the contrary it is a supervision of whole and integrated people."

3. Assumptions

The model assumes that the supervisor will be able to implement the principles of clinical supervision without judging and evaluating the teacher's classroom performance in terms of his or her [the supervisor's] personal-performance criteria and thus negating the mutually-arrived-at agenda of the pre-observation conference. Another assumption, stated in a explicitly in both Cogan's and Goldhammer's versions of the clinical supervision model, is easily the most difficult phase of the model to successfully implement: the establishment of a healthy supervisor-teacher relationship with respect to supervision. If this cannot be accomplished the model becomes little more than "a refined teacher inspection technology." The painful lessons of history--and sadly enough, of modern times--are not lost on most teachers, with respect to instructional supervision and what has been its ultimate aim: evaluation and conformity. The antagonistic paradigm of the "haves" versus the "have nots", with respect to authority and power, all too often applies to the supervisor and teacher, respectively. Clinical supervision cannot function in an environment of thinly-veiled suspicion and hostility. The instrumentality of the entire model hinges on one central concept, that is, the cultivation of a meaningful relationship of trust and mutual respect between the two parties; without this affinity the model will degenerate into a superficial, inspection-type supervision exercise.

For the teacher's part, the model assumes that a teacher is capable of recognizing and accepting that his or her teaching can be improved and would be willing to actively participate in a supervision program to that end. Concerning the improvement of classroom teaching, Good and Brophy have written:

Teachers, like everyone else, are sometimes unwilling to examine their own behavior and engage in self-evaluation. Is this because teachers are not committed to their profession or are unwilling to engage in this extra work necessary to improve their existing skills? Is it because they feel that they are already functioning at optimum effectiveness? We doubt it. We think teachers will seek opportunities to evaluate and improve their teaching if acceptable and useful methods are available.

The model also assumes that a teacher will have the ability to set aside his or her previous opinions, biases and/or animosities toward the supervisor, as an authority figure, and the concept of educational supervision, in general; it assumes that the teacher will embrace this model of supervision as a useful alternative to the evaluation-oriented supervision to which the teaching profession has been subjected in the past.

The model has many advantages for the supervision of instruction and, if is implemented as its proponents have envisioned, it can be a boon to the teaching and supervising professions. It places the participants on an equal footing, creating a helping, rather than judgmental, relationship with respect to the improvement of teaching. First and foremost, if a supervisor is able to master those of his or her personal beliefs and biases about instructional supervision which run contrary to the principles of the model and, secondly, if the supervisor is able to convince the teacher to lay aside his or her pre-conceived ideas about instructional supervision, then he or she will be able to establish the type of rapport with the classroom teacher that will allow the free exchange of ideas, suggestions and constructive criticisms by both parties.

Clinical supervision can be a "model of suprvision that is interactive rather than directive, democratic rather than authoritarian, teacher-centered rather than supervisor-centered" if it is employed as its authors have outlined.

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