What is the meaning of supervision?

Supervision can be defined as to monitor, guide, evaluate and correct tasks, behaviors, attitudes, skills, thinking and performance to achieve the highest standard of quality, effectiveness and efficiency. Supervision came from the word supervise which can easily be define as direct. It also can be define as to ‘watch over’ and  ‘oversee’. Supervision, meanwhile, can be define as a leadership instructional act where the ultimate aim is to improve classroom instruction. Besides helping to enhance the teaching and learning process, is also seen as a process to ensure the formal curriculum is implemented in the classroom. More importantly the supervisory process should provide teachers with constructive feedback leading to increased teacher motivation. There is also no denying that the supervision process also helps school heads evaluate teacher competency in terms of teacher knowledge, skills and attitudes (Komoski, 1997 in Sidhu and Chan, 2010). Ohiwerei and Okoli (2010) define supervision as the process whereby an authorized person whose nomenclature is thereafter called supervisor sees to the work of others to see whether it is in line with stated standard, and if not, he corrects, directs, teaches, demonstrates, assisting in teaching techniques, conferring with teachers, assisting in processing of evaluating and examination and revising curriculum and courses of study, holding conferences or group meeting to discuss problems, attending local, state, regional and national professional conventions. From this definition, we can conclude that in the process of supervision it will involve two major parties that was the supervisor and the person who been supervise by him. The supervisors then would land a hand for the persons that he supervise by using many ways as the purpose to help them to increase their skills of works.

            Besides that, Holland & Adams (2002) in Sidhu and Chan (2010) describe the well maintain and well done supervision process would help on supports teaching and professional development, enhances “personal and collaborative enquiry, promotes critique, and contributes to an evolving pedagogy”. It means that supervision process could leave a major impact to increase on the level of teaching and professional development. It could help the teachers to work as a team and it can help them in their class. Acheson and Gail (2003) highlight that supervision is not autocratic but collaborative and interactive. Furthermore it is not directive but democratic. It is also more teacher centered rather than being an authoritative supervisor-centered activity. Olivia (1993) puts it aptly when she stresses that the supervisor can be seen as "a teacher of teachers". From above description, we can conclude that the process of supervision would help the teachers to improve their skills of teaching and it was not a process to determine the mistakes done by the teachers but the process of helping each other.

            Meanwhile, school leadership has become a priority in education policy agendas across OECD and partner countries. It plays a key role in improving school outcomes by influencing the motivations and capacities of teachers, as well as the environment in which they work. At the interface between classrooms, individual schools and the outside world, school leadership is essential to improve the efficiency and equity of schooling. There were many definitions that have been given by the scholars to the school leadership. Lambert et. al. (2002) define it as "the reciprocal processes that enable participants in an educational community to construct meanings that lead to a shared purpose of schooling". Meanwhile, Elmore (2000) define it as “the guidance and direction of instructional improvement”  He also defines it as a  “guidance and direction imply some degree of shared expertise and some degree of difference in the level and kind of expertise among individuals” and also as “Distributed leadership, them, means multiple sources of guidance and direction, following the contours of expertise in an organization, made coherent through a common culture”.

            Blasé & Blasé (2000) highlight that effective instructional leadership that postulates formative supervision should exhibit effective and collegial dialogue at the post conference stage to encourage teacher reflection and professional growth. They point out that that the following are some of the strategies can be used:

a.           Talking with teachers to promote reflection.

b.          Make suggestions that are purposeful, appropriate, and non-threatening

c.           Give feedback that is specific to classroom observations and at the same time expressing care, interest and providing praise.

d.          Model - Demonstrate teaching techniques in classrooms and during conferences as they are impressive examples of instructional leadership.

e.           Use inquiry and solicit advice/opinions.

f.           Praise and focus on specific and concrete teaching behaviors.

Blasé & Blasé (2000) further stress that effective instructional supervisors “hold up a mirror,”serve as “another set of eyes,” and are “critical friends” to teachers. They point out that school heads that used the above strategies encouraged teacher reflection resulting in the increased teacher motivation, satisfaction, self-esteem, efficacy and sense of security. Fischer (2000) notes that the role of a supervisor puts a critical demand on school heads’ competencies in skillfully analyzing teacher performance and appropriate data. Besides that they must be skilled in the following areas:

 (a) what to evaluate,

(b) how to observe and analyze classroom observation information and other data, and

(c)how to translate the results of observations and the summary of data into meaningful conference feedback that guides and encourages teachers to improve instruction. All these can have a profound effect on the learning that occurs in each classroom.

            When a comparison been made between school leadership and instructional supervision, we can see that those two have some similarities between them. The first similarities were both of it was focus on improving the quality of service of teaching and learning provided to the students. The school administrator would make sure that his school would always be in positive and safe environments so that the education can easily be spread to the students. As a school leaders, the principals must make sure that their teachers was providing their students with a required and enough supports so that all of them can reach the highest potential possible. To help their teachers on this, the school leaders (principals) should always done an observation to the process of teaching and learning happens in their schools so that they can provides their teachers with enough feedback and resources. The feedback by the school leaders to their teachers would help them to improve their quality of teaching and learning activity so that they would also help on increasing the quality of their schools.  It means that, the instructional supervision and school leaders should be carried out by the school administrators and the purpose for both of it was on increasing the level of quality and students achievements in their school. The school leaders/administrators would provides sufficient feedbacks to their teachers to help them on increasing the level of quality in their teaching and learning activities in purpose of increasing the level of achievements for their students.