Article Preview
TopBackground
This study reports the findings of an unpublished thesis entitled “Effectiveness of the Developmental Supervision Model as a Tool for Improving Quality of Teaching: Perceptions of the South African Primary School-Based Managers” (Musundire, 2015). With regards to the South African education system, De Clercq (2008) confirms that up to now, there are no proper supervision and evaluation approaches in place which can be considered effective enough to improve the quality of teaching. There is also convincing evidence that even the current South African Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) which is linked to the TQM philosophy is associated with many implementation challenges (Grobler, 1993:92; De Clerq, 2008:1). One of the contentious issues to be addressed is whether supervision and evaluation mean the same or not or whether they should be separated or not (Nolan & Hoover, 2005, 2011, Musundire; 2015, 2018). Sidhu and Fook (2010) found that in Malaysia, a majority of teachers interviewed, did not know the difference between teacher evaluation and teacher supervision, Musundire, 2018). What they found happening in schools was conventional supervision (inspection) while formative (developmental) supervision was hardly practised (Sidhu and Fook (2010).
Zepeda (2007a:29) and Minnear- Peplinski (2009:19) believe that developmental supervision entails more than just evaluating a teacher. Their argument is based on the belief that this supervision approach takes into account different conceptual levels of development of the educators, coaching strategies for professional development, collaboration between the teacher and the supervisor, and other contextual factors (Glickman, 1985; Glickman, 1990; Ralph, 1998, 2002). The current debate about whether supervision and evaluation should be separated relies on one’s perceptions. Most supervision studies agree that evaluation systems are characterised by judgemental approaches while supervision pays more attention to promoting teacher development and performance improvement by initiating collegiality, commitment, collaboration, inspiration, participation and motivation (Glickman, 1990; Kutsyuruba, 2003:110)
As indicated above, there are issues regarding whether educators should be supervised or evaluated using the same instrument, standards, criteria and processes despite their different levels of expertise and commitment as well as social and economic backgrounds (Gallie, 2006; De Clercq, 2008). In view of this, one must not forget that each educator is relatively unique with his/her own individual professional needs and expectations due to different contextual factors (Glickman, 1981, 1985; 1990; Ralph, 1998, 2002; Hallinger, 2010:135; Kadushin & Hartkness, 2014).