Summary Paper - Approaches and Outcomes for Conducting a Conference

THE DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH TO SUPERVISION SUPERVISORS SHOULD RECOGNIZE STAGES OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND TREAT TEACHERS AS INDIVIDUALS.

Jean Sorrell is a third-year teacher at Highton School. She is young and enthusiastic, constantly involved with her students, providing activities and materials, and asking other teachers for ideas.

Regina Norton has begun her eighth year at Highton. Students, parents, and faculty see her as a stalwart, committed, and excep tional teacher. Other teachers come to her often for advice, and she goes out of her way to help others.

George Halsom is also a third-year teacher at Highton. He often appears confused about how to manage and organize the classroom to avoid disruption. He is quiet and stays to himself. Rarely does he initiate conversations with other staff members. At the end of the day he quickly gathers his materials and leaves for home.

Wednesday morning, the supervisor announces to the staff that their third inservice session on new arithmetic materials will be held after school. All of the teachers know they are to attend but their reac tions to the workshop are varied. Jean Sorrell shrugs her shoulders and thinks, "I hope that I can learn some new activities." George Halsom frowns and thinks "another wasted afternoon." Regina Norton thinks "I already know the material to be explained; my time could be better spent working on the school curriculum or helping Judy with her new science center."

CARL D. GLICKMAN

T eachers within the same school have different perceptions of what is useful to them. A super visor's plan for instructional improve ment might be a delight to one teacher and a bore to another. Most supervisors can readily concur that their staff is not of one mind.

Considerable professional research has been undertaken to prove and chart what people have known for centuries: that human beings do not think alike. But how people think and the development of thinking processes has become a field of study in its own right. Piaget, 1 Bruner, 2 Smilansky, 3 Kohlberg,4 and others document developmental stage changes from infancy to adolescence. There is a wealth of research on so cial, moral, cognitive, language, and emotional development. Researchers have found that as young people ma ture, they move at varying rates through a predictable sequence of stages. Studies on growth and devel opment of the two hemispheres of the brain5 provide further neuro- physiological support for the gradual transition from thought that is ego centric, intuitive, and subjective to thought that is more social, rational, and objective. Attention to develop ment has recently expanded to the adult years. Works such as Passages, 6 The Seven Ages of Man,7 and Life History and the Historical Moment* suggest that people encounter com mon experiences at various stages of adult life.

The need to consider raaturational levels of school personnel has been recognized in the situational leader ship literature,9 but research is just emerging on career-specific stages of teacher development. 10 The pilot work of Francis Fuller," who studied beginning teachers and successful, ex perienced teachers, has contributed to the idea that the child develop ment progression from egocentric to altruistic thinking recapitulates itself when adults enter a new career. Be ginning stages of teaching are char acterized by teacher concerns for their own adequacy. The question is largely, "Will I make it till tomor row?" The teacher wants to be shown Carl D. Glickman is Associate Profes sor, Department of Curriculum and Supervision, University of Georgia, A thens.

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"a bag of tricks" for survival. Later, as the teacher becomes more secure, concern moves from one's self to one's students. The question then be comes, "Now that I can survive, how can I contribute more to the welfare of my students?" The teacher desires to seek out resources, share ideas, and become involved in tasks that will refine and expand educational opportunities for students. The logi cal conclusion of this sequence is the outstanding teacher who eventually moves away from self-concerns to concerns for improving one's class room to concern with one's school and profession as a whole. The teacher clearly knows his or her com petencies, knows where to seek re sources and feedback, and desires to help other teachers and students im prove education for the collective group. This simplified notion of teacher development is shown in Figure 1.

Let's return to the vignettes. Viewed in a developmental context, Jean Sorrell is largely in Stage II, George Halsom in Stage I, and Re- gina Norton in Stage III. Naturally, stages are not all-inclusive and there is overlap from one to the next, as well as the possibility of regression when obstacles become too great. But using this simple framework for discussing Jean, George, and Regina, we find three individuals with con trasting concerns within the same school. In order for a supervisor to work effectively with each teacher, the supervisor needs to be knowl edgeable about differing approaches to instructional supervision.

Figure 1. Simplified Stages of Teacher Development

Thought Concern Stage

Egocentric

Self adequacy Classroom

II

Other students and teachers

Models of Supervision The various approaches to super vision can be grouped in three some what simplified models, categorized as nondirective, collaborative, and directive. 12 Nondirective models ad vocate that the supervisor be a list ener, nonjudgmental clarifier, and encourager of teacher decisions. Col laborative models advocate that the supervisor be equal with the teacher, presenting, interacting, and contract ing on mutually planned changes. Directive models propose that the supervisor be the determiner and en forcer of standards of teacher be haviors by modeling, directing, and measuring proficiency levels.

Matching Models of Supervision to Stages of Teacher Growth With an understanding of models and simplified stages of teacher growth, some broad matches can be made. Teachers in Stage I, concerned with self-survival, might profit most from the directive model. Teachers in Stage II, who are concerned with im proving the learning environment for their students, might be approached using the collaborative model. Teach ers in Stage III, who are concerned with helping other students and teachers, may need only the minimal influence of the nondirective model.

In describing how our three teach ers might be treated in accordance

Figure 2. Supervisory Behavior Continuum

Listening Clarifying Encouraging

Presenting Interacting Counteracting

Modeling Directing Measuring

Nondirective

Collaborative

KEY T =Maximum Teacher Responsibility for Decisions I =Minimum Teacher Responsibility for Decisions

S =Maximum Supervisory Responsibility for Decisions s ^Minimum Supervisory Responsibility for Decisions

with the models, the focus will be on instructional improvement and in- service education, but the same application could be made for class room evaluation, curriculum devel opment, organization for staffing, or other supervisory functions.

Teacher George Halsom is barely "hanging on." Students are continu ally frustrating him and discipline problems are keeping him from the job of teaching. The supervisor needs to be concerned with George's sur vival. George needs explicit, detailed help. It would be proper for the sup ervisor to demonstrate or model for George how discipline might be en forced. He might actually take over the class for awhile and have George observe, or he might arrange for George to sit in on another teacher's class where discipline is well con trolled. The supervisor could then detail for George the type of changes that need to be made by going over classroom rules, enforcement poli cies, reward and punishment conse quences, and verbal and nonverbal teaching behaviors. The supervisor could also set up a two-week per formance period during which George might focus on one factor (for in stance, clearly explained and en forced rules) and keep records of the number of disturbances encoun tered. A 25 percent decrease in "act ing out behaviors" might be set as the goal for those two weeks.

The supervisor would behave quite differently with Jean Sorrell. Recog nizing that Jean wants to continually improve learning activities for stu dents, the supervisor would approach her as a colleague. They would come together to set future directions for improvement. The supervisor would first observe what activities were cur rently used and how students were responding to them. After the obser vations were reported, the supervisor would discuss with Jean whether her observations were similar to those of the supervisor. Based on the sharing of observations, a common direction for improvement would emerge (for instance, the need for fewer reading materials in the science enrichment center). Together they would write

NOVEMBER 1980 179

Figure 3. Matching Models with Teacher Stages

Self Adequacy Classroom Other Students and Teachers

Modeling Directing Measuring

Presenting Interacting Contracting

Listening Clarifying Encouraging

out a contract that described class room changes to be made by Jean, resources to be gathered by the super: visor, and future assessment to be made by both.

The supervisor must take still an other direction in working with Re- gina Norton. She must acknowledge that Regina has superior teaching skills that at least match the super visor's own teaching abilities. Regina mainly needs support in determining her own growth. The supervisor might listen to Regina discuss the perceived needs of students, teachers, and herself. Her thinking could be extended by asking questions for clarification. Finally, the supervisor might encourage her to put thinking into action. For example, Regina might believe that her students and most other students do not have enough reading materials at home to supplement reading in school. The supervisor would ask her to elaborate and she might describe how, on home visits, she sees almost no reading ma terials; children spend most of their time in front of the television. The supervisor would encourage her to consider what might be done. If Re gina thought a home lending library might be a possibility, the supervisor would encourage her to discuss this proposal with other teachers in the school.

It is apparent that a supervisor might better serve his or her staff by responding to individual needs in stead of using a single, uniform ap proach. Spending time directing and guiding Halsom toward classroom management improvement, collabor ating with Sorrell on changing in structional materials, and allowing Norton to pursue a home lending library is ultimately more productive than having them all attend an after- school meeting that is useful to only a few. At times a staff will have com mon needs and can be approached as one group. In most cases, however,

the professional supervisor should use varying approaches to treat teach ers as individuals. •

1 Jean Piaget, The Language and Thought of the Child ( New York: Meridian, 1973).

2 Jerome Bruner and others, Studies in Cognitive Growth ( New York: John Wiley, 1966).

3 Sara Smilansky, The Effects of Socio-Dramatic Play on Disadvantaged Pre-School Children ( New York: John Wiley, 1968).

4 Lawrence Kohlberg, "Stage and Se quence: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach to Socialization" in Hand book of Socialization Theory and Re search, ed. D. Goslin (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969).

5 M. C. Wittrock, "Education and the Cognitive Process of the Brain," in Education and the Brain, 77th NSSE Yearbook, Part II (Chicago: Chicago Press, 1978).

6 Gail Sheehy, Passages ( New York: Dutton, 1976).

7 Robert R. Sears and Shirley S. Feld- man, eds., The Seven Ages of Man ( Los Altos, Calif.: William Kaufman, 1973).

8 Erik H. Erikson, Life History and the Historical Moment ( New York: W. W.Norton, 1975).

9 See Phillip E. Gates, Kenneth H. Blanchard, and Paul Hersey, "Diagnos ing Educational Leadership Problems: A Situational Approach," Educational Leadership 3 3 (February 1976): 348- 354; and Gordon Cawelti, "Selecting Appropriate Leadership Styles for In structional Improvement" (Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1976). (Vid eotape).

10 For examples, see Anthony F. Gregorc, "Developing Plans for Pro fessional Growth," NASSP Bulletin 5 7 (December 1973): 1-8; Thomas A. Petrie and Inez A. Petrie, "The Prep aration of Administrators: Some Ob servations from the Firing Line" (Uni versity of Nebraska-Omaha, January 1977); Katherine K. Newman, "Mid dle-Aged Experienced Teachers' Per ceptions of Their Career Development," paper presented at the American Edu cational Research Association in San

Francisco, 9 April 1979; and Gene E. Hall and Susan Loucks, "Teacher Concerns as a Basis for Facilitating and Personalizing Staff Development," Teachers College Record 80 (Septem ber 1978): 36-53.

11 Francis F. Fuller, "Concerns of Teachers: A Developmental Concept ualization," A merican Educational Re search Journal 6 (March 1979): 207- 226.

12 See Carl D. Glickman and James P. Esposito, Leadership Guide for Ele mentary School Improvement ( Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1979); and Carl D. Glickman, Developmental Supervision, (Alexandria, Va.: Association for Super vision and Curriculum Development, in press).

It's not too late to reglsterl

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