The structural and functional implications of a school district's creation of subject-area supervisor positions

✍ Scribed by Saundra J. Tracy

• Book ID: 104631729
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1021 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1874-8597
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00125497

✦ Synopsis

A review of the literature on the position of central office subject-area supervisors quickly reveals a lack of attention to these positions. Wimpleberg concludes that this position may be the least well understood and most frequently overlooked professional role in schools today (Wimpleberg, 1987). Blumberg notes that people who occupy this position see themselves as relatively ignored by the academic community in addition to occupying a position in the structure of the organization that is continually questioned (Blumberg, 1984). The literature that does exist often confirms Blumberg's claim that the role definitions for subject-area specialists are noncomparable and idiosyncratic. Nevertheless, there is a limited but compelling body of literature that suggests that central office subject-area specialists significantly contribute to effective instruction and instructional programming. Pajak (1989), Perrine (1984), Little (1991), Tracy & MacNaughton (1993), and others argue that these supervisors benefit school districts because they 1) provide teachers with subject-area expertise and technical assistance that principals cannot provide, 2) cut across the traditional school, department, and subject-area boundaries because of the nature of the tasks in which they are involved, and 3) respond proactively to teachers' needs due to their ability to be divorced from formal teacher evaluation.

School districts deciding to organize supervision of instruction around subject-area supervisor positions must also be aware of the potential problems inherent in this organizational structure. Oliva notes that the configurations of these positions typically conform to the limitations imposed by the school district and the resources available (Oliva, 1989). In a study of these positions in one state, this meant that the majority of persons occupying these positions split their time between a central office role and that of classroom teacher (Tracy, 1993). In a significant number of other districts in this same state, the position of subject-area supervisor had been given to building principals as an addition to their building-level responsibilities (Solow, 1995). The dangers in the various configurations of these positions seem to be the potential creation of a separatist subject area view of teaching and learning (Elmore, 1991;Harris, 1985) conflict with other positions within the district that also contain supervisory functions