Some Principles of Supervision for Small Village Schools

Abstract

STUDENTS concerned with the preparation of teachers have complained that large school systems often fail to do their part in training young teachers in service during the formative years just after graduation. Because of the requirement of two or more years of experience before one may teach in some of the large schools, most inexperienced teachers begin their careers in small villages, where they have almost no supervision and are left largely to their own devices. After some service in small schools a few of them may be employed in larger cities which have the advantages of supervision. In village schools with from six to fifteen teachers, no supervisors are employed, and there is little oversight of the teaching by the principal and the superintendent. Since approximately 49 per cent of the pupils in the United States attend schools in communities with populations of less than twenty-five hundred,' the problem of providing for the reasonable supervision of instruction in small schools is important. Supervision needs redefinition if it is to be applied reasonably to these small schools. This redefinition may be accomplished by answering the following queries in a way that may suggest a pattern of organization and procedures for putting the theory of instructional improvement into practice: (i) What officers of instruction in small village schools have supervisory functions? (2) What supervisory functions ought to be performed in small village schools and who should perform them? (3) How should the personnel of small village schools be organized to accomplish the functions of supervision suggested?