William DeWitt stated that, “Instructional supervision can only succeed as it becomes a part of, rather than apart from, the visible community it also serves. Instructional supervision can be defined as the process of assisting teachers in improving their instruction. Also giving assistance to teachers to improve instruction and to promote personal and professional growth. The art of assisting others to improve their skills in the classroom environment.
There are many obstacles that are encountered when dealing with high school students and their instructors, many different attitudes, moods, and thoughts are scattered throughout the institute making it more of a challenge to deal with the everyday complications presented to principals. Principals and other high powered officials take many different approaches tackling this common issue. In a sense its a bit relative to coaching a sports team, there are different methods and approaches that can be taken to motivate the team such as negative or positive criticism.
Yet one must learn how to evaluate which method is appropriate for the situation at hand. Even though when we speak on instructional supervision we automatically think about the principal, teachers play a very valuable role, as does the environment perceived by the instructors. In studying instructional supervision I ran across a case study completed amongst four principals in the same school district who all had their own opinion on instructional supervision and its methods which which ranged from luck to evaluation.
The principals saw instructional supervision as the critiquing and evaluating of teachers and also an avenue to achieving goal set into place by the principal. These goals put into perspective by the principal are known commonly as , “the vision, being on the same page, and going in the same direction. ” When the principals where asked about instructional supervision various answers were recorded.
