Professional Supervision Your belief about public education/professional training in general

Public education is always mired in one or the other controversy and ongoing reforms is always the order of the day. From the basics of the nineteenth century, education has come a very long way. The basis of development of education models are seen to be contemporaneous in Britain and USA and most of the commonwealth. At the same time unique innovations are underway in the U.S.A. In the modern context it is indeed important to consider many aspects of global values, and the reforms that were made in public schools become relevant in the modern context which shares a similarity on a global scale. The problems of rampant illiteracy are the cause of unrest in cities and the earlier educationists believed that these problems of the cities can be overcome with increasing the number of educated youth. (Cuban, 2003)

One of the changes that came about in the supervision of schools after 1990 is in the way schools are governed. Innovative programs like the learning community program have now provided advantages where teachers could use the wide arena of professional learning that is being made available to them and continue the ongoing learning to strengthen the community. (McLaughlin; Talbert, 2006) Such programs are systematic and encompass the entire school, which creates the response to a student's learning problem to be seen in a wider focus rather than individual teacher's perceptions. Thus community supervision makes the process of teaching and mutual supervision effective rather than a hierarchical model. One of the changes we may include is the way supervision gets changed with the changes in education. The problems of education reforms in various countries show that the supervisory models change with the change in the educational system; as well it is seen to be a basis for deflecting crises and reform on educators. (Ginsburg, 1991)

Under these circumstances teachers and instructors are at the receiving end of the evaluation by the hierarchy and supervisors on one hand and by the students and their performance on the other. Today the educator is in need of being up-to-date in many fields, not only in the chosen subject but also in participating and understanding the roles of the instructor and supervisor in changing circumstances and innovations like RTI and interventions and community learning concepts. The supervisory role is also changing and these changes are now happening on a global scale. Therefore supervisors, educators and teachers must act in synergy and also respect each others roles to create confidence and faith. This is more important today because the hierarchical system of responsibilities is breaking up to include a collective form of responsibility where all participants have voice and a definite say. The prospect of evaluation thus must be approached from the point-of-view of the educational policies and changes that have come about. Therefore the time has come to change both the summative and the formative analysis.

2. Your own personal philosophy of supervision, your understanding of evaluation -- both formative and summative

The evaluation of both formative and summative is not adequate to bring about the necessary teaching skills or personnel. Both have inherent defects and it is time to change both these approaches. Broadly speaking it is a judgment mechanism that can make the educators vulnerable and apprehensive. In this scenario supervision is nothing but an analysis of the performance of educators, and formative and summative analysis are two methods that mean two different things. In the formative supervisory approach the strengths and weakness of the teacher is sought to be analyzed and corrective measures taken that relate to the ability and the effectiveness of the teacher in their role. On the other hand the summative analysis relates largely to the interest of the establishment and is based more on the feed back, and thus for the purpose of deciding if the teacher need continue or get sacked. (Burke; Krey, 2005)

Technically the teacher is not allowed to correct the required behavior or lack because these methods do not have an inbuilt system to provide for the analysis of the problems that the teacher would face in the job. Like wise if we expand the way the formative analysis is done, it can be shown that in the formative evaluation the role of the teacher is more. The teacher is helped by the inputs received from the judgments of their performance by...

(Burke; Krey, 2005) The fundamental thing is that the formative evaluations are done by the central authority or individual school personnel. On the other hand the summative evaluation is done by the instructor and the involved persons themselves. In some cases both roles are done by the same entity. (Oliva; Pawlas, 1997)
A school or institution focuses mainly on the students who are lagging. Experience shows that in the traditional school when the teacher is using instructional time to assist students, the students who have mastered the content will suffer; and on the other hand if the teacher continues without assisting the lagging students, they will fall behind. In such cases intervention may be necessary for the student rather than an evaluation of the teacher. Evaluation processes must be designed such that there is transparency and openness in the processing of the evaluative data. Likewise evaluation must be used only to encourage further endeavor and not as a means to apply penal provisions. There must be a step to creating positive results and continuity from any stage. Thus education program supervision and evaluation must be proactive and supportive rather than punitive. (Burke; Krey, 2005)

The school thus is quick in identifying the lagging students and can allot time and support to them. This model accordingly is expected to produce a teacher community that is goal oriented and professional with meticulous methods of input to students and interaction among the community. There must be special consideration of the feedback from the community teaching activity which is not included as of now. The interdependence of the school community will thus make the teacher's contribution and learning valuable. Secondly there is a synergy with the teacher participation there is a greater synergy for improvement in the class room. Eight six percent of elementary school principals rated the introduced learning community concept as high and desirable. (Cuban, 2003)

In such cases both the system of evaluation will fail. Thus there must be evolved alternate method to these two. One of the suggested methods by researchers is the indirect method of analysis where there is less scope for bias. The indirect method of teacher evaluation is better than the summative and the method. This is because the teacher's professional skill acquired in the process of participating in the community learning and other concepts, and the ability to provide interventions where necessary, personal interests and the basic characteristics of the teacher can be statistically analyzed without making the evaluation drastic and trying to either let the teacher continue or be sacked. Rather such formulations can help in pointing out the shortcomings in their professional profile and help the correct it by taking adequate training. Indirect statistical measures therefore are better than the conventional methods adopted. (Burke; Krey, 2005) Thus the change in paradigm of how the teacher performance is viewed can bring about a change in the supervision and conductance of the system.

3. How evaluation and supervision relate to each other

Evaluation is a part of the overall supervision and while there is a need to supervise the performance of the teacher on the basis of the curriculum entrusted, which can bear on the evaluation of the class room conduct, and the delivery of the teacher, evaluation feed back from the entities that have a direct bearing on the activities form the basis of the normative and subjective analysis. One problem that supervisors have to bear in mind is the position of the teacher who is being evaluated in terms of diversity in the class rooms. The teacher cannot change to include all the diverse demands of the students simply by wish. There are many researches that show that an impact can happen with diverse populations in the U.S., both on the teachers and on students. (Klingner; Edwards, 2006)

Populations that were culturally and linguistically diverse and compared to common education programs may not respond to the teacher as is envisaged in the supervisor model. In such cases the evaluation must be based on the way the teacher handled the intervention models --giving extra care for the students who are backward. To create a new paradigm in education therefore the method of providing an opportunity to allow for the accommodating of the weaker ones and the slow learners into the mainstream academics must be considered. The Response To Intervention -- RTI models are known to improve educational opportunities, especially for those who are facing challenges on account of ethnic, linguistic and other traits. (Klingner; Edwards, 2006)

Torgesen (2007) insists that there must always…