Supervision of Instruction: Dying or Dead

Abstract

Medical science, by using various mechanical devices, has learned to sustain life in a human body long after the body would normally have failed to function. Is the same approach being used in areas of education? Are we artificially maintaining the life of some concepts and practices which would naturally die without continued outside support? It would seem this analogy applies particularly well to the area of supervision in schools. The historical-and contemporary-goal of supervision in schools is the improvement of the teaching-learning task. When one asks teachers about the supervision of instruction in their schools, little evidence emerges that it is flourishing. Possibly the practice of supervision is dead and life signs are being maintained only through colleges, universities, and state departments of public instruction which still demand course work in supervision for certification requirements or for advanced degrees in education. To help determine the current status of supervision in professional education, teachers, professors of supervision, and state departments of education were asked to respond to a variety of questions. Replies came back from twentyfour state departments, seventy-six professors from sixty colleges, and 140 teachers from three midwestern states. The replies from each group give a provocative picture of the status of supervision.