Techniques in the Supervision of Teachers: Preservice and Inservice Applications

Perhaps one of the most important responsibilities of a principal is the supervision of instruction (Lunenburg, 1995). Instructional supervision has as its goal the professional development of teachers, with an emphasis on improving teachers' classroom performance. What does this mean to the teacher? Unfortunately in many cases the teacher is given little direction on how to overcome specific weaknesses and improve her performance. It seems that if she is to improve as a teacher, this improvement must be self-directed. In the absence, then, of help from the principal, it becomes obvious that by default the teacher may develop a very restricted range of instructional strategies. These often become the career pattern of instruction for many teachers. In this situation, the teacher has few resources for improvement other than his own trial-and error experience, a type of learning that can lead to excellence or disaster. Teaching, because it is an extremely complex process dealing with many variables, has been difficult to analyze. Research on teaching and learning accumulated during the last three decades has provided a variety of teaching techniques that may be utilized effectively by teachers as they interact with, facilitate, and direct students within their educational settings (Allen et al., 1969; Hunter, 1984; Hunter & Russell, 1990; Lunenburg & Ornstein, 1996; Wiles & Bondi, 1996). Listed below are a half-dozen durable instructional strategies designed to help teachers improve their classroom performance. Knowledge of these six teaching techniques may be of help to the principal in her role as supervisor of instruction. Reinforcement Research has indicated that if teachers reinforce students both verbally and non verbally when they participate both in large- and small-group classroom discussions, irrespective of the correctness of their responses, students will participate more often and more actively in classroom discussions (Brophy, 1981; Harmin, 1994; Hamachek, 1995; Smead, 1995; Slavin, 1989; Stallings, 1975). If teachers wish to get students to participate more often and more actively in class, they should discover what is reinforcing for particular students and then reinforce the students when they do participate in class. It would seem that the more techniques a teacher has at his disposal for reinforcing students, the better his chance for getting good pupil participation. For example, when a student makes a particularly good response, the teacher might say, That's exactly it, and nod her head affirmatively as she moves toward the student. In this case, she combines one positive verbal reinforcer with two positive nonverbal reinforcers. Such a combination produces a cumulative effect. Examples of positive non-verbal reinforcement include the following: The teacher nods and smiles; the teacher moves toward the pupil; the teacher keeps her eyes on the pupil; and the teacher writes the pupil's response on the blackboard. Positive verbal reinforcement include the use of words and phrases such as Good, Fine Excellent, Correct, etc., or otherwise verbally indicating pleasure at the pupil's response. Teacher actions and responses which act as negative reinforcement tend to decease pupil participation and should be avoided. Examples follow: The teacher scowls or frowns; the teacher moves away from the pupil; the teacher fails to maintain eye contact with the pupil; the teacher responds with No, Wrong, and That's not it; the teacher manifests expressions of annoyance or impatience. Recognizing Attending Behavior Related literature on pupil attending behavior indicates that pupil behavior can be classified as either work oriented or non-work oriented behavior and that these pupil behaviors can be distinguished from each other. Two important variables which are dimensions of total teacher behavior were reported in the literature as instructional technique and the immediate effect of technique on pupil attending behavior (Brophy, 1986; Good & Brophy, 1989). …