Reclaiming Instructional Supervision: Using Solution-Focused Strategies to Promote Teacher Development

Abstract

To positively affect teacher quality, instructional leaders must engage teachers in ways that support improved practice and seek to empower teachers as creative and knowledgeable risk takers. A collaborative, strengths-based approach that promotes teacher growth, rather than one that conditions teachers to await administrator directive or approval, is warranted. In this conceptual article, we draw from developmental supervision and solution-focused supervision to posit a blended model of instructional supervision that equips aspiring and emerging instructional leaders with strategies to identify and amplify teacher strengths.

Influence of School Heads’ Direct Supervision on Teacher Role Performance in Public Senior High Schools, Central Region, Ghana

“…For formal education to achieve its goals, key actors such as school heads and teachers must fully accomplish their roles and responsibilities. Teachers are in the best position to make decisions that directly affect students' well-being and achievement (Stark, McGhee, & Jimerson, 2017). Therefore, one key concern for success of educational institutions is to ensure that teachers are well supervised.…”

“…As Adu, Akinloye and Olaoye (2014) intimated, supervision (whether internal or external) should be considered a deliberate effort aimed at enhancing the outcomes of each educational institution. It is a process of involving teachers in instructional dialogue for the purpose of improving teaching and increasing student achievement (Sullivan & Glanz, 2013). The term "instructional supervision" refers to the cycle of activities between a supervisor and a teacher targeted at improving classroom performance (Ekyaw, 2014).…”

“…In this study, teacher role performance refers to the development of good instructional documents, effective lesson delivery, regular assessment of students, regular and punctual school and class attendance, effective use of instructional time, and exhibiting good working relations. In effect, instructional supervision gives teachers opportunities to collaborate, set goals, understand how their students learn and become better teachers through improvement in their role performance (Kalule & Bouchamma, 2014;Sullivan & Glanz, 2013).…”

Facilitation of Teachers’ Professional Development through Principals’ Instructional Supervision and Teachers’ Knowledge- Management Behaviors

“…A research view that instructional supervision should be made an integral part of the curriculum to ensure continuous development supports teachers' demand for a collegial instructional-supervision system [24,25]. Teachers' views on instructional supervision may be borne out of the fact that in Taiwan, instructional supervision is poorly structured, with no clear policy related to it.…”

Untitled

“…Hazi (1980Hazi ( , 1982Hazi ( , 1994 helped begin this important discourse about how supervision interacts with evaluation, particularly through policy decisions. Scholars in this field tend to focus more on the professional development that can occur as a result of feedback (Zepeda, 2006(Zepeda, , 2017(Zepeda, , 2018(Zepeda, , 2019, which in turn leads to professional growth Zepeda, 2017) and ongoing support typically provided by a principal or instructional coach (Derrington & Campbell, 2015;Stark, McGhee, & Jimerson, 2017;Range, Anderson, Hvidston, Mette, 2013;Zepeda, 2018). Additionally, while many of these scholars maintain a philosophical difference between the functions of supervision and evaluation, they often acknowledge the realities of evaluation models and instead offer practical suggestions of how to work within preexisting evaluation systems.…”