The purpose of this article is to chronicle the views of eight prominent professors of supervision regarding the state of instructional supervision. A confluence of factors has influenced the evolution of supervision as a practice and incipient field. Issues involving its very definition, its scope and methods, its status as a field, and its…

Public school supervision in the United States has been historically influenced by its roots in western Europe and unique characteristics of the American educational system. Much history of school supervision describes it as a series of disjointed and unrelated events. And supervision appears to simply reflect greater social and educational…

Since the assistant principalship originated as an administrative function, it is not surprising that assistant principals' primary responsibilities have always centered on routine administrative tasks, custodial duties, and discipline. Recent efforts to expand the assistant principal's role to include instructional leadership can be historically…

Postmodernists have criticized modern conceptions of supervision as bureaucratic, hierarchical, and oppressive. This paper asserts that the postmodern proclivity to completely eschew expert supervision, evaluation, and judicious use of directive supervision is misguided, potentially limiting, and dangerous. The paper argues that collegial…

The development of public school supervisors has been varied and complex. Examined are the factors that led supervisors, in the early twentieth century, to move away from autocratic and bureaucratic methods and adopt more professional standards. (SI)

This book offers a plan for improved classroom practice through the supervisory process. It includes hands-on practices for developing a personalized supervision strategy, research-based and empirically tested strategies, field-tested tools and techniques for qualitative and quantitative observation, a comprehensive resource of traditional and…

Pedagogical correctness "is characterized by a set of 'right' and often avant-garde beliefs about how the curriculum and schools should be structured." When supervisors avoid supervisory methods that are considered not "pedagogically correct" or fail to adopt practices considered incorrect, instructional improvement is likely to be compromised.…