L I B RAR.Y OF THE U N IVER.SITY OF ILLINOIS 370 If6e i70. 5*7- Loo TABLE OF CONTENTS I. The Development of the Function of Supervision 5 II. Current Concepts of the Nature of Supervision 12 III. Techniques of Individual Supervision 21 IV. Techniques of Group Supervision 48 V. The Future of Supervision 67 Selected Bibliography 71 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/guidetosupervisi60reed CHAPTER I THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FUNCTION OF SUPERVISION Early History of Supervision. The function of supervision in American public schools goes back very far in the history of our national system of education. Long before the colonies became a na- tion, the establishment of schools in many colonies was required by law. These schools were under the control of school committees of citizens. The committees hired teachers, superintended the erection and opera- tion of schools, and from time to time made inspectorial visits to the classrooms while they were in session. The writer's father, as a boy of less than twenty years of age, taught in such schools in Illinois, and in his later years often reminisced about the visits of school committee inspectors. He emphasized the nervousness of the teacher on such occasions, because his job was dependent on the satisfaction of the school committee with his efforts, and the attempts of the committee to appear omniscient in their judgments of the effectiveness of the work of the teacher they had employed. Needless to say, the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the members of the school committees of a half century or more ago with the teaching efforts of their employees tended to be based on educational ideals which would find little agreement among professional leaders today. During the early part of the last century, the position of school superintendent emerged. At first he was only a fiscal officer. Later he came to be selected because of his professional training and experience, and school committees and boards tended to delegate to him the func- tion of supervision of instruction. Then there followed the recognition by the superintendent that he was not qualified to supervise satis- factorily instruction in some of the newer branches of the curriculum, such as music, art, and physical education. Therefore special-subject supervisors in these fields were appointed. The acceleration in the growth of large industrial plants and the urbanization of American population, which occurred in the last quar- ter of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the present century, meant that individual schools as well as school systems grew enormously in size. New administrative and supervisory officers were created as needs seemed to dictate. As a result, we are faced today with a chaotic and disorganized situation with respect to the function of supervision. The Development of the Position of Elementary School Principal. As graded schools became more and more common in 6 Bureau of Educational Research larger cities, replacing the one-room school with all grades in one room, it became necessary to have one official in each building who would assume general responsibility for the entire school. This person was really the principal teacher, hence the title, principal. At first few if any supervisory duties were performed by the principal. His position required that he assume full responsibility for instruction in one of the classrooms. In addition, the duties of the full-time teaching principal of thirty or forty years ago may be classified in three categories. First, he was the representative of the school in its relationships with the central office of the superintendent of schools; he made out reports, attended principals' meetings, and was the recipient of general orders from the administration. Second, he was the representative of the school in the community; he received complaints and suggestions from parents, and was responsible for supervising the playgrounds and the general care of playgrounds and buildings. Third, he was the head teacher in the school itself; he held teachers' meetings at which administrative mat- ters of the school were discussed, was the court of appeal in disciplinary cases in which the teachers felt the need of a higher authority, and in- spected the plan books which teachers were required to keep. It will be noted from what has been said above that the full-time teaching principal of an earlier day assumed supervisory functions with respect to the program of instruction only in the final duty mentioned above — the inspection of the plan book. Since the lesson plans of that time were mere notations of pages in the textbook with a phrase or two added, inspection of plan books was an exceedingly perfunctory affair. It must not be thought from what has been said above that thirty or forty years ago there were no nonteaching principals. There were many in the larger schools, and as urbanization continued to accelerate, their number grew. Moreover in many smaller school systems, super- intendents, recognizing the need for a kind of supervisory leadership which they could not themselves afford because of their administrative duties, appointed one full-time nonteaching principal over two or three schools which were close together. Such principals divided their time between these schools, while in each school a head teacher was desig- nated to act for the principal in his absence. In many other schools a compromise was worked out. The prin- cipal was freed from teaching for a portion of each day; the time thus made available was to be spent in administrative and supervisory duties. At the present time, the situation of the elementary school principal- ship is a conglomeration of all the plans described above, plus others. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 7 .In Illinois there are nonteaching principals, part-time teaching prin- cipals, principals of two or more schools, and in many situations, princi- pals of small high schools and elementary schools combined. Sometimes the same man acts as high school principal, elementary school principal, part-time high school teacher, and coach. Needless to say, supervision of the elementary school gets little of the time of such a functionary. General and Special-Subject Supervisors. As has already been stated, when the curriculum of the elementary school was enlarged to include art, music, and physical education, supervisors were appointed in these fields. Many school systems of thirty to sixty years ago had such supervisors who visited the schools at varying intervals of from one to four weeks. They went to each classroom and either taught lessons in their specialties or gave instructions to the teachers with respect to what they should teach in the interval before the next super- visory visit. They seldom delegated responsibility of any kind to the principal except for instruction in his own classroom. Mention has also been made of the appointment of general super- visors, or supervisors of the traditional school subjects. The situation with respect to the duties and functions of these supervisory officers as well as of the special-subject supervisors is at present not at all clear in many school systems. With respect to the special-subject supervisors, is it their business actually to teach their specialty to classes of chil- dren; or to teach the teachers how to teach, and to supervise their work; or to teach the principals to teach the teachers, so that the latter can teach the children? All these theories can be found exemplified in school practices in various school systems at the present time. Practices in supervision of the traditional subjects also vary. In some school systems there is one supervisor for elementary schools; in others there are two or more, either coordinate in authority or acting as chief and subordinates. In some of the large school systems, there are supervisors in each subject-matter field, such as language arts, science, or arithmetic. As in the case of the special-subject supervisors, the position of these supervisors of traditional subjects with respect to their relation- ship to principals is an anomalous one in many school systems. In some school systems the supervisors work directly with teachers without any reference to the responsibilities of the principal. This is a most un- fortunate situation, for often the principal and the supervisor do not agree in their educational philosophy, and if that is the case, the teach- ers are in a hopeless state of bewilderment because their leaders are at odds on many basic questions. 8 Bureau of Educational Research Emergence of the Elementary School Principalship as the Key Position in Instructional Leadership. It seems obvious from what has been said above that the supervisory situation in our public schools, developing as it has from the needs of various school systems and without much regard for general policy, needs to be clarified. This clarification has taken place in theory, and the theory is in accord with practice in many of our larger and better school systems. But to put the theory into practice everywhere requires administrative changes in a vast number of other school systems, and it is hoped that the point of view of this bulletin may give the direction for such changes. The core of the theory which we are stating is that the principal is the instruc- tional leader in the school. Whether he is a teacher during part of the day or during the whole day, he is in either case in constant daily contact with both the pupils and the teachers in the school of which he is principal. Presumably, moreover, he also knows intimately the community where the school is located and is in frequent contact with parents and community leaders. No general supervisor in the school system as a whole can be so fitted to exert constant and con- sistent leadership in his school. Inadequacy of General Supervisors for Consistent Supervisory Leadership. Of course it will be granted that since there are fewer general supervisors, a larger salary may be paid to them, and they may have a higher degree of competency than the usual run of principals. It will also be granted without argument that special-subject super- visors will be better trained in the fields of their competencies than the school principal is in those fields. There is, therefore, a superficial plausibility to the idea that the general or special-subject supervisors should assume leadership in instruction in all of the schools. But this is an unsound point of view. In the first place, since such supervisors are not easily available, or are available only at stated intervals, they can not give the daily help, inspiration, and counsel which good teachers desire. In the second place, theory in elementary education is leading us more and more to accept the point of view that since we are teaching the whole child, there must be an integration of all the instructional thinking which controls the planning of his daily living and learning. The necessity for this integration of instructional thinking makes it impossible for an art supervisor, for example, to supervise in the most profitable way the art instruction in a classroom if he knows little or nothing of the instruction offered the class in other fields. It also makes it difficult or impossible for a general supervisor to exert the best kind of leadership in an individual school or classroom, since he can not know intimately the children concerned in the learning process, or the Supervision in the Elementary Schools 9 .community where they spend more waking hours than they do in the school. The general or special-subject supervisor is an expert, bringing to individual schools, principals, and teachers a breadth of view and a depth of scholarship which should be greater than that of teachers and principals. But the real responsibility for leadership in the interpreta- tion of the ideas of the general or special-subject supervisor lies with the principal who is in daily contact with teachers, children, and community. There is another phase of this situation which is important. There is much disagreement on large areas of educational theory and practice in education. It is more than likely that in a school system there may be variance in point of view between supervisors and principals as well as between principals and teachers. The latter type of differences can be relatively easily adjusted between right-minded principals and teach- ers by conference, discussion, and mutual understanding. After all, teachers and principals are in daily association in the work of a school. But if there is variance in point of view between principal and supervisor, opposing ideas are not so easily adjusted, and both the teachers and teaching will suffer if the supervisor feels that the teachers are responsible to him and should look to him for leadership. A teacher is bound to be confused if he receives conflicting suggestions from his principal and his supervisor; and the principal is likely to say, in effect, "Well, if the supervisor wants to have things done that way, then I wash my hands of the matter." In many school systems there is just this kind of situation; it develops into an unseemly struggle for power between supervisors and principals over methods of instruction in the schools. It will be noted that the word "power" is used in the preceding sentence. It can probably be safely said that whenever general or special-subject supervisors assume the responsibility for leadership of the individual teachers, the infrequent contacts of the two groups lead almost invariably into a power situation, and, as will be shown later in this bulletin, a good supervisory situation is never a power situation. To recapitulate what has been said about the present theory of the position of the principal in a modern school organization: Teachers in the elementary school should be in frequent, if not daily, contact with an officer who will furnish constant and consistent leadership in instruc- tion. This means therefore that the principal has become the focal point for the improvement of instruction in our schools. Functions of Special-Subject Supervisors. If it is accepted that the principal is the focal point for improvement, the question naturally 10 Bureau of Educational Research arises of how general or special-subject supervisors fit into the picture. If we consider first the special-subject supervisors, we are faced with the fact, already stated, that they have far more training and com- petence in their fields than have the principals and teachers. First, it seems obvious therefore that they should furnish the broad compre- hensive leadership in curriculum-making which any school system needs. As a result of visits to schools and of conferences with prin- cipals and teachers, they should have an over-all picture of instruction in their special fields. Having no daily routine assignments, they also have time for study of the school curriculum outside their fields and of progress in the educational world as a whole with reference to their special subjects. They are therefore in a position to make valuable sug- gestions for the use of their special subjects in enriching the cur- riculum in other fields through correlation with their special subjects. Second, the special-subject supervisors should meet frequently with principals and teachers in conferences designed to offer the inspiration which a specialist is capable of giving and to help on particular prob- lems which may arise in the course of the conference. Third, these supervisors should also act as specialists on call by teachers and principals. Frequently questions will arise with reference to instruction in a special field, which teachers and principals feel themselves in- i capable of answering. In such a case, the specialists in the field will be called in to give advice and counsel. Functions of General Supervisors. If we turn now to the func- tions of general supervisors, we find that they are analogous to those of the special-subject supervisors, except that they are broader in scope. The general supervisor should see the problem of curriculum develop- ment as a whole. It is his duty to furnish leadership for the whole school system in the improvement of this curriculum. He also holds supervisory meetings with principals and teachers and is available on call for supervisory leadership; but his most important function is that of leading in the over-all development of curriculum materials. This leadership is a particularly important function. In any school system there is a wide difference among teachers in their ingenuity in developing curriculum materials. Any supervisor knows that some teachers are peculiarly capable of developing units of instruction which embody the best theories of modern education. If there is no way of making such units of instruction available to other teachers who may lack some of this ingenuity, then there is a loss to the school system. The good supervisor tries to make available to all teachers the cur- ricular materials and ideas of the few who are doing outstanding in- Supervision in the Elementary Schools 11 .structional work. In this way growth in instructional power becomes an attribute of the whole school system, not a characteristic of the few outstanding teachers. The supervisor becomes an integrating leader and not a mere assistant to a few of the poorer teachers, as is likely to be the case if he attempts to exert leadership only through sporadic supervisory visits. Needed Developments in Supervision in Illinois. From the pre- ceding discussion the direction of the need for supervisory develop- ment in Illinois becomes clear. The central principle of this develop- ment is that every teacher shall have an instructional leader to whom he can look for help and guidance frequently, if not daily. To provide this, the school systems of Illinois should adopt one or more of the fol- lowing measures: (1) The appointment of full-time nonteaching principals in all schools large enough to justify such an appointment. (2) The appointment of full-time nonteaching principals over two or three smaller schools which are close enough so that the principal can easily get from one to the other. (3) The appointment, in all school systems large enough to justify it, of a general supervisor or several general supervisors who will integrate instructional progress. (4) The appointment of special-subject supervisors, in school sys- tems large enough to justify them, who shall look upon their work in terms of general leadership and not in terms of acting as itinerant teachers. (5) The consolidation of many of the small attendance units into larger units, in order to provide for economical and efficient supervision. In a state so largely rural as Illinois, a word must be said at this point with reference to one-room rural schools. We must recognize first that many of these schools have no real reason for existence. At the present time more than 90% of the counties in the state are sur- veying their school organization and attempting to reorganize on more defensible bases. This reorganization will greatly diminish the number of one-room rural schools. It is inevitable, however, that many will still remain. For these schools the daily supervisory leadership dis- cussed above will unfortunately be impossible. An approximation of it, however, is possible, if the educational authorities in the state recog- nize sufficiently the need for supervisory leadership and provide it as far as possible through the appointment of rural school supervisors in the various counties. CHAPTER II CURRENT CONCEPTS OF THE NATURE OF SUPERVISION Inspectorial Supervision in the Past. Having considered briefly the history of supervision and some aspects of a desirable organization to make it possible and efficacious, we now turn to an analysis of what supervision is and how it should be done. When we do so, we are immediately confronted with the fact that concepts of the nature of supervision, as has been stated above, have undergone radical changes in recent years. Throughout its early history, supervision was largely inspectorial. Its methods were often, if not usually, autocratic and dictatorial. The assumptions behind supervision of this character are clear. They may be stated as follows: There is one right way to perform every aspect of the teaching process. That right way is known to the supervisor. It is the duty of the supervisor to see to it that every teacher under his direction shall perform every teaching process in the right way. If any teacher does not perform every teaching act in the right way, there are only two possible reasons for the situation: one is that he is ignorant of it — in this case the supervisor must tell him how to do it; the other reason is that he is perverse or lazy — in this case, the super visor, exercising the authority vested in him, must discipline the teacher and make him perform the teaching act in the right way. If one accepts the accuracy of these assumptions, then autocratic supervision becomes both logical and proper. It may, indeed, be tempered with humanity or kindliness, but whatever its emotional mood, it must still remain authoritarian. New Concepts of the Teaching Process and Their Consequences in Theories of Supervision. During the last fifty years, develop- ments in the field of American education have made the assumptions stated above utterly untenable. A new psychology, a respect for the period of childhood resulting from the child-study movement, a re- examination of the meaning of teaching, and new concepts of the curriculum have produced a revolution in the field of education seldom or never equalled in the history of the education of children. Every phase of our educational system has had to undergo basic changes both in theory and in practice as a result of this revolution. And our con- cepts of supervision and our definition of it have been remade in the twentieth century. 12 Supervision in the Elementary Schools 13 It will be worth while to examine some phases of this impact of the twentieth-century revolution in education on the field of supervision. To begin with, the older concept that there is one right way to perform every aspect of the teaching process with any group of children and under any conditions has had to be abandoned. Today we have come to recognize that teaching" is a highly non-repetitive process. We realize that the character of classes changes from year to year; that the inter- ests, capacities, and experiences of one group of children may not be the same as those of another group; and that therefore the approach and leadership in learning exercised by the teacher ought to vary with varying groups. We also recognize that the world about the children changes from year to year, often from day to day, and that such changes should be reflected in methods of teaching. Perhaps most im- portant of all, we recognize that the intelligence, the emotional nature, the interests, the experiences, and the capacities of teachers vary, and that what would be a good method of teaching for one teacher might not be a good method at all for another. 1 As a result of this, it is im- possible for one teacher to teach exactly as another does, or even to teach any of the curriculum the same way one year as he taught it the year before. Non-Repetitive Character of Teaching. Since the above is true, then it must be granted that every hour in every classroom is a unique performance. What goes on has never occurred before in exactly the same way in the history of the world, and it will never occur again. How untenable, then, is the former idea that the right way to teach every idea or process to a class could be prescribed in advance and is the same with all classes and all teachers ! To make this point of view clearer, a comparison with what is done in industry where supervision is also employed may be illuminating. Processes in a factory can be, and are, subject to exact formulas, con- sisting of blueprints and specifications. A supervisor in a factory has an adequate and objective measure, both of the job to be done and the results to be obtained. He also has measuring instruments to determine^ whether the job has been done properly. He reads, for example, a blue- print showing what a given automobile part looks like when it comes to his workmen. Then he notes precisely what the machines in his de- partment are to do to the part, and finally, knowing the tolerance which 'On this point, see Ernest Horn, Methods of Instruction in the Social Studies, Scribners, 1937, especially pp. 34-35. For a review of the research in the field of the effectiveness of various methods of teaching, see Walter S. Monroe and Arlyn Marks, "General Methods of Teaching," Educational Administration and Supervision, XXIV:497-512, October, 1938; and by the same authors, "General Methods of Teaching Evaluated; Results of Research," Educational Adminis- tration and Supervision, XXIV:5S1-S92, November, 1938. 14 Bureau of Educational Research is permitted, he has instruments to determine how well his workmen have done their work. The whole task is exact, objective, and almost completely repetitive; it has to be if the part is to fit properly as the machine passes down the assembly line. But as has been stated above, the most outstanding aspect of teach- ing is its wow-repetitive character. One can not make a blueprint of instruction. If one could, it would make school supervision an easy task. As it is, however, the older concept of supervision, dominated by the factory-blueprint concept of teaching is utterly untenable. Even so simple and relatively technical a process as teaching subtraction will vary with the intelligence of classes, the different experiences of the children which may be used as an approach or as a motivating force, the current happenings in the world about the children, and the inter- ests and enthusiasms of the teacher. Teaching as a Creative Art. This highly non-repetitive character of teaching means that, at least in our present state of knowledge, it is not a trade but an art. Teaching is a creative process. While, as in all arts, there are certain basic principles and techniques in the art of teaching with which the teacher must be conversant and in the applica- tion of which he should be expert, yet the ways in which he weaves together the various elements of the teaching situation in accord with these principles and techniques are infinitely varied, and the process of such weaving is a creative process. In the light of these statements, it is easy to understand why a good supervisor is reduced to the verge of despair when a teacher says to him, "I am anxious to cooperate with you. Tell me just what you want me to do and I will do it." That is the very thing which a good super- visor can not do. A man may employ a landscape artist to paint a picture for him. The employer may specify the scene he wants painted, as, for example, the view from his front porch. But he can not tell the artist just how the picture is to be painted. In the first place, a good artist would be unwilling to accept such orders; in the second place he could not if he would because he has to paint the scene as he sees it, which may be quite different from the way someone else sees it. Of course the employer may object to the artist's use of color or his perspective and might, particularly if he were an artist himself, induce him to change these. But the artist will not and, indeed, can not permit anyone to dictate to him his treatment of the basic elements of the picture. To do so would be to spoil his work. It would kill the creative elements in his picture which would be its very essence if he painted it as he saw things. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 15 Changes in Supervisory Theory to Correspond with New Con- cepts of Teaching. Earlier in this bulletin, it was stated that the concept of the meaning of supervision has changed during the develop- ment of educational theory in America. While this is true, it must nevertheless be remembered that the aim of supervision in the abstract has been the same throughout its history. The aim of supervision has always been the improvement of instruction. 2 But the definition of a process usually includes some indication both of the aim and of the methods, or processes, by which it is carried out. Change in definition, then, does not necessarily imply change in aim. Let us consider two definitions of supervision: (1) Supervision consists in improving instruction through insuring that teachers use correct, predetermined methods of classroom instruc- tion in every teaching process. (2) Supervision consists in improving instruction through the in- tellectual, professional, and emotional leadership of teachers. The first definition would have been an acceptable statement 100 years ago. It is unacceptable today; it is too narrow and its assumptions are in sharp contradiction to present-day theories and ideals of teach- ing. The second definition is acceptable today; it has breadth and scope and rests on a totally different set of assumptions. But it will be noted that the expressed aim of supervision is identical in both definitions. In the light, then, of what has been established, the problem of supervision becomes clear. It is to improve the non-repetitive, highly creative process of teaching. This process includes, to be sure, some well-developed techniques. But these techniques must be capable of an indefinite number of variations in application, both because our concep- tions of the process are changing, and because the applications of the techniques vary from time to time, from class to class, and from teacher to teacher. Moreover the application of the techniques can not be dictated by a higher authority, nor can it be prescribed in advance. The variations will be occasioned by the principles and ideals concerning the educative process which are held by the teacher, and his concepts of the ways in which these principles and ideals should be applied to the teaching process. In the case of a good teacher, sound and progressive principles and ideals are inextricably interwoven with what he actually does in the classroom. Supervision as Improvement of Both Thinking and Doing. The improvement of teaching, which is the aim of supervision, must be a 2 See Alexander Rorer, Principles of Democratic Supervision, Ch. Ill, Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1942. 16 Bureau of Educational Research combination of improving the ways in which teachers think and the quality of the things they do. If so, supervision faces a basic psycho- logical problem which is as old as civilization: If you want to change the behavior of people in important respects, you must change both their thinking and their doing. What shall be your approach? Do you begin by changing their thinking so that their doing will change, or do you begin by changing their doing so that their thinking will change? 3 Emphasis on Improving Thinking. There are interesting his- torical sanctions for both approaches. In general, the Christian religion has throughout the ages been dedicated to the former approach: to change the thinking of people with the expectation that their doing will change. It accepts the Hebrew idea that "as a man think eth in his heart, so is he." When the founder of the religion was asked for prescriptions for action, as in the case when a definition of one's neighbor was demanded of him, he answered in the form of parables. Presumably the purpose of these parables was to get people to think about the principles involved and to make their prescriptions for action on the basis of their thinking. Thus the purpose of instruction in the Christian religion has been to induce men to be reborn spiritually and mentally. That the method has been successful over the ages in the lives of millions of men is unquestionable. Bloodthirsty and vicious men have become gentle and law-abiding under the influence of a change to the Christian way of thinking. But there is an unfortunately large amount of contradictory evidence. Professing Christian ideals, men have prac- ticed the most revolting crimes and persecutions. Even today, many a man accepts the Christian way of thinking in church on Sunday, but is cruel and ruthless in his business life the remainder of the week. Emphasis on Improving Doing. The Soviet Union has, on the other hand, approached from the opposite angle the problem of chang- ing the behavior of its millions of people. It forced — and that word is used in its literal sense — vast changes in the actual doing of its people. For example, let us take the collectivization of the farms in Russia. Thousands of well-to-do farmers resented this process bitterly. The peasants, largely illiterate at the beginning of the process, knew little of what it was all about. The Soviet government forced the sys- tem on all, whether or not they believed in it or understood it. Along with this process of forcing the people to do certain things, however, the Soviet Union also embarked on a large-scale program of education 3 For a thorough discussion of this point, see Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, pp. 199-236, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1941. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 17 .and propaganda to change the thinking of the people. They made stu- pendous efforts to make the average citizen literate so that he could read the propaganda; indeed, in general he was permitted to read only official statements of his government. However, the approach to a change in the behavior of the people was through securing a change in their doing even though a change in thinking was fostered. The result has been interesting. Collectivization of farms has im- proved the material status of a large group of Soviet workmen, who before had been farm hands wholly dependent on their employers. This group now strongly favors the Soviet ideology. Their thinking has been changed, both by doing and by education toward a new way of thinking. But other thousands of formerly prosperous farm owners have refused to cooperate and are now living as exiles or kulaks, work- ing as mill hands or day laborers far from their former homes. Their thinking has never been changed. However, it must be said in common fairness that in general the process of changing the thinking of the people of Russia by changing their doing has been remarkably suc- cessful. Improving Teaching by Improving the Doing of Teachers. Both the points of view just discussed have been exemplified in attempts to improve teaching. The earlier point of view in supervision, which has previously been described, was rigid and prescriptive in its determina- tion of the teacher's doing; what he thought was considered to be rela- tively unimportant. Methods courses in early normal schools were largely directed toward specific techniques of teaching specific subject matter. The heavy emphasis on detailed lesson plans, characteristic of the instruction in practice teaching in the teacher-training institutions of forty or fifty years ago, which has persisted in some institutions up to fairly recent times, was a form of emphasis on doing rather than on thinking. Improving Teaching by Improving the Thinking of Teachers. On the other hand, many if not most of the teachers' institutes in recent years have had the purpose of changing the thinking of teachers by giving them new visions of their work. Speakers at these institutes testify that, while they would not deny that some of the teachers who attend institute lectures may change their doing because their thinking has been changed, yet for the sake of their self-respect they are glad that there is no objective measure of the extent of the change. A large proportion of courses in education which are taken both by prospective teachers and by teachers in service are directed at the purpose of changing and improving the thinking of teachers. Many a 18 Bureau of Educational Research teacher of such courses has had a disillusioning experience when he has visited a former student in that student's own classroom. The student may have listened attentively to the lectures and even have demon- strated his proficiency in new ways of thinking to the extent of re- ceiving an "A" in the course. And yet the professor of education may see in the work of the classroom not one evidence that the teacher has put into practice what the college instructor thought he had taught. Such disheartening experiences, of course, are not by any means the invariable result when a professor visits the classroom of a former student. Often he is delighted to find that a student has put into prac- tice in an intelligent and effective way the theory learned in college classrooms. It seems obvious that when in asking whether one should change the doing of teachers by changing their thinking, or change their think- ing by changing their doing, one has created another of the false dichotemies which have been the curse of our educational thinking. The only sensible answer is that one should change both. But when one has said that, it does not follow that the analysis made above is futile. On the contrary, it shows that in the case of producing change in any significant area of behavior, thinking and doing are inextricably inter- woven. Progress in the two must proceed not only simultaneously but » in close relationship to each other. The Basic Psychological Problem of Supervision. In this fact lies the basic psychological problem of supervision. In the complex, creative act of teaching, it is absolutely essential that the teacher should see the relationship between what he himself and the children are doing and the fundamental principles of teaching which are involved. Unless there is this integration between thinking and doing, a teacher is either an automaton, following a mechanical routine which he does not either understand or appreciate, or else an incompetent idealist who knows what he wants but has not the slightest idea how to get it. The basic psychological problem of supervision is to secure, through various supervisor}- techniques, integration between teaching practices and sound principles of education on which the practices are based. It must follow that every supervisory technique should be judged on the basis of its effectiveness in producing this integration. It also follows that the good supervisor will examine techniques of supervision to determine in what ways they may be modified to secure better integration. It will be the aim of the remainder of this bulletin to discuss some techniques in limited areas of supervision in the light of the basic Supervision in the Elementary Schools 19 .psychological problem stated above. Before doing so, it would be well to survey the total field of supervision and to indicate which areas will be considered. Chief Supervisory Functions. There are five main divisions of supervisory responsibility. They are: (1) Diagnosis of the instruction of individual teachers and leader- ship in improving their teaching. This function of supervision includes classroom visitation of teachers by the supervisor, followed by a super- visory conference. It also includes informal discussion of the teacher's problems with the supervisor, either in the latter's office or in the teacher's classroom. The classroom visitation-supervisory conference aspect of super- vision has been so stressed by writers and theorists that in the minds of many people this one phase of supervision has come to be identified as comprising the whole field. This is a most unfortunate conclusion. While one should not minimize the importance of this function, yet it is only one part of the task to be done, and in many ways not the most important nor the most effective in improving teaching. Moreover, to identify all supervision with classroom supervision precludes the possi- bility that the full-time teaching principal can exert any supervisory leadership, and leads such a principal to say, "I can not visit the class- rooms of my teachers during school hours, therefore I can not super- vise." If one defines supervision as the intellectual and professional leadership of teachers, then the quoted statement is as absurd as it would be to say, "I have an allergy for potatoes and can not eat them; therefore I can not eat !" (2) Group diagnosis of the instruction of teachers and leadership in improving their teaching. This function is performed through teachers' meetings of various kinds, including those of all teachers in a school building, of the teachers in one grade or of several grades, or of teachers with some special problems or interests. (3) Leadership in course-of -study production. In a good school, the course of study is never finished. It embraces such activities as the assignment of large areas of learning to specific grades so that an integrated instructional plan for the curriculum of the whole school may be achieved; the treatment in bulletin form of special problems pertinent to a grade or a group of grades (such as a bulletin on activities in the social studies in the primary grades); and the production of descriptions of units of work which have been written by individual teachers and are duplicated as suggestive guides for other teachers. 20 Bureau of Educational Research (4) Leadership in informal and simple research. The good teacher is always trying out new ideas. Such experimentation may not be worthy of the name research in the same sense that a doctoral dis- sertation is research; but under the leadership of a good supervisor it may be subjected to some simple controls and objective measurements and then may become a better basis for teaching method than mere guesses. (5) Contacts with the public. This function has been sadly neglected in our educational endeavors. Of course it is impossible to make skilled students of education out of all the parents and citizens of a community. But these people have the right to know in a general way what the schools are doing and why they are doing it in the way they are. Teachers and supervisors have tended to be so immersed in their work and so sure of their own educational methods and ideals that they have been prone to be insensitive to public knowledge and opinion. Many a school executive has had a rude awakening when groups of citizens, knowing little of educational theory and method, have become incensed about what was going on in the schools and have organized an attack on the theories and methods being used. The best person to keep the public informed is the school principal or supervisor, and he should consider this as an integral part of his professional job. In discharging each of these five functions of supervision, the work of the supervisor demands attention to the basic psychological problem stated above, namely, to secure in the minds of teachers the integration of thinking and doing. Perhaps this is not so evident with number 5; but on consideration one can see that if teachers are confused in this integration, their teaching will be confused, and the supervisor can not ' defend their methods to the public. In the space of this bulletin, it will be impossible to consider more than the first two functions in detail; namely, individual diagnosis and treatment, and group diagnosis and treatment. CHAPTER III TECHNIQUES OF INDIVIDUAL SUPERVISION Some Preliminary Principles. As has been said earlier in this bulletin, many school people identify all supervision with the diagnosis of the instruction of individual teachers and assistance in improve- ment. This is unfortunate because the situation under which this func- tion of supervision must be carried on is impossible in any school where the principal is also a full-time teacher. The typical conditions under which this first type of supervision operates are as follows: The supervisor visits a teacher's classroom and observes a lesson; then, after school, the teacher and the supervisor have a conference and dis- cuss the lesson. Before considering the solution of the problem of the integration of thinking and doing in this phase of supervision, it will be well to examine certain aspects of the situation. First, it should be noted that if any real good is to come from the observation, the conditions in the classroom should approximate as closely as possible those existing when the teacher is alone with his class. This means that the supervisor should enter the classroom as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, and during his stay there should emulate a shadow. He should say nothing at all and should do nothing which in any way calls attention to him- self. The custom in some schools of having a class rise and greet the principal when he enters the room is not only absurd in itself, but it forces immediately an unnatural, atypical situation for teaching. Of course what has been said above does not mean that there may never be cases when the supervisor is called into a classroom to assist the teacher and the class in some phase of their work of which the supervisor may have some special knowledge. But in an observation which is supposed to be a true basis for supervisory study, the super- visor must make himself as completely unobtrusive as possible. Whether or not a supervisor should make notes during the recita- tion is a moot point which is comparatively unimportant. It seems obvious that if the making of notes by the supervisor disturbs the teacher, no notes should be made; if it does not disturb the teacher, then there is no objection to it. The teacher should make the final decision in the matter. Parenthetically, it may be said that many super- visors testify that they can train themselves to remember, even in small detail, what has happened during the observation; thus they have little need of notes, particularly if the ideals of the teacher-supervisor con- ference discussed later are followed. 21 22 Bureau of Educational Research After school, the teacher comes to the office of the supervisor, or the supervisor goes to the teacher's classroom for the supervisory confer- ence. Which should be done is a matter of no importance; the question should be settled on the basis of convenience to both participants. Psychological Elements in the Teacher-Supervisor Conference. We are ready now to analyze the psychological situation when teacher and supervisor are ready to begin the conference. Let us note first that they are going to discuss a situation — the observed recitation — which is over and done with. Moreover, it was, in many respects, a unique performance. It never happened before in the same way as it did when the supervisor made his visit, and it will never happen again in just the way it did. Recriminations, criticisms, and advice, therefore, based on points in the recitation are futile and silly unless they produce a change of teaching behavior in the future. Attack and Defense Situations. The situation in the conference will tend to be one of attack and defense unless some other frame of thinking of the participants is developed. The supervisor is placed in the position of pointing out to the teacher what was good or poor in his performance. It is natural psychologically for the teacher to try to defend himself. The result tends to be an argument which each participant tries to win. To prove that this situation is not an imaginary one, let us con- sider what a prominent author in the field of supervision has said about the supervisory interview. The principal's understanding of the teacher and of himself is essential in planning the introductory phase of the conference. Commendation of good points in the teacher's work should be included at the outset. All normal persons respond to praise which is honestly and justly given. Approval of the good points observed contributes to setting the acceptable minimum standard of instructional achieve- ment. . . . Both strong points and weaknesses should be included in the same conference. ... In any one conference the successful principal includes for discussion about two weak points and two strong points. One of the commendable points is intro- duced at the beginning of the interview. If five points are included, the conference should be organized somewhat as follows: The first item should be one of the teacher's strong points, needing little discussion but serving to establish rapport and to suggest good teaching standards. The second point should be either a minor weakness or a readily improvable good point, and need not receive much stress. The third point should be stressed markedly, generally being the greatest weakness needing attention. The fourth point should be given more stress than the second but less than the third, and there- fore should be an item of strength or weakness in which improvement should occur. If it is a weakness, it should be a point with praiseworthy features which can be commended. The last point should be given stress almost equivalent to the emphasis Supervision in the Elementary Schools 23 placed on the third point. Since it is the concluding point in the conference, the principal should be able to indicate some good phase regarding it which may be used as the basis for eliminating the weak features. The element of commendation is a desirable concluding touch. 1 In analyzing the above technique, it seems obvious that if a prin- cipal habitually uses the outline suggested any teacher who has the intelligence he ought to have to teach will very soon be aware of the sequence of points. He will be mildly pleased by the first one, and will tend to dismiss the second one as relatively unimportant. But he will wait for that third point with apprehension and will mentally gird him- self for his defense. Thus the value of the first two points is largely lost. As Professor Milo B. Hillegas used to say in his supervision classes, "If the course of a supervisory conference usually runs on the formula 'You did this that was good and that that was good, but . . . ,' then any intelligent teacher remains tense, waiting for the 'but.' " From the point when the word "but" is used to the end of the inter- view, it will tend to be conducted in an argumentative atmosphere of attack and defense. Little real good is likely to come from such a situation. Mental Set of the Teacher During the Recitation. If interviews such as are described by Kyte are the rule, another point should be noted. What will be the mental condition of the teacher during the recitation ? He will tend to have his attention constantly divided between his teaching activities and his doubts and misgivings with reference to what the supervisor is thinking about and what he is going to criticize. With divided attention, he simply can not be expected to do a normal job of teaching, or a really good one. Teaching is an exacting occupa- tion and demands the highest degree of concentration on the task. Criticisms of Check-List Supervision. The third point to be noted about the psychological situation in the supervisory interview is that it is devoted to a discussion of a process which is, at least in our present state of knowledge, impossible to measure objectively. This means that the discussion must remain in the realm of ideas and opinion. This point is worthy of emphasis, because there has been during the past twenty years a considerable movement toward attempting to objectify supervision. The endeavor has taken the form of the develop- ment of elaborate check lists which are supposed to be filled out by the supervisor and then to serve as the basis for the supervisory conference. 1 George C. Kyte, The Principal at Work, pp. 261-262, Ginn and Company, 1941. 24 Bureau of Educational Research As a basis for discussion, one of the simpler of these check lists is given below. 2 DATE SCHOOL TEACHER GRADE...- LESSON OBSERVED EXTENT OF VISIT To what general learning type does the lesson belong? BOTH TEACHER PUPIL NOBODY Who did the purposing? Who did the planning? Who did the organizing? Who did the judging of values? YES DOUBTFUL NO Did teaching methods correspond to the learning types ? Did subject matter meet pupil's present and life needs? Did pupils know what was expected of them in preparing lesson? Were pupils working consciously toward a known goal ? Was the assignment provocative of interested, purposeful study ? Was the studying an active, vigorous process ? Were pupils using a variety of reference material ? Were comparisons made and applications based on past learning ? Did pupils ask questions freely about all things interesting them? Did pupils maintain their interest during the period? Did their studying evidence satisf actory progress ? Could they interpret and apply the materials learned? Were differences in ability utilized in the learning activity ? Were new problems raised for attack as outgrowths of learning ? GENERAL REMARKS An examination of this check list as a type will make obvious certain important facts. First, it will be noted that the claim of objectivity can be based solely on the fact that the list merely takes the total teaching act and breaks it down into what the maker of the list believes to be its component parts. Judgment on each item is as subjective as would be an opinion on the lesson as a whole. The naive assumption behind the making of check lists is that the additive sum of a group of subjective judgments is more objective than a few subjective judgments would be. 1 Ibid., p. 250. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 25 No mathematician or scientist would agree on this idea. Second, it should be noted that check lists do not agree at all on what the com- ponent parts of the teaching process are. The whole business of selecting them is subjective. Moreover the attempt to objectify supervision and thus to make it scientific is doomed to failure because at the present time we do not have sufficiently accurate measuring instruments of the component aspects of classroom teaching to enable us to apply the methods of science in evaluating the process. Scientific methods of studying a process demand that one first define with absolute accuracy what one starts with; second, state with equal accuracy what was done; and finally, measure with precision what the results were. In the process of teaching no one of these three can be done. While we may be able to measure with some small degree of accuracy the immediate learnings in a recitation, the concomitants of the learning process in any single recitation defy definite measurement. And who would have the temerity to state that we can describe accurately the exact psychological, physical, and emotional condition of learners and teacher in a class- room at the beginning of a recitation, or the precise meaning of the classroom activities in terms of this condition? Another objection to the check lists is that they attempt atomistic study of a process which should be studied as an organic whole. Check lists, therefore, can never give a true picture of the recitation; it is a whole which is far different from the mere additive sum of a group of relatively isolated parts. Finally, the check list makes the psychological situation of the teacher during the observed recitation an unhealthy one for the best teaching results. As in the case of the good-and-bad-point technique described above, the teacher tends to wonder during the recitation period just what the supervisor is checking during each minute of the recitation. If the teacher is familiar with the check list, his attention is thus directed to an attempt to remember all its different headings and no teacher can do his best under such a distracting situation. Bases for a Defensible Technique for the Supervisory Confer- ence. Because the good-and-bad-point technique and the check- list technique have been criticized it does not follow that there is no defensible technique for the process of individual diagnosis and treat- ment. The technique which will be defended in this bulletin is based on the following considerations, some of which have already been discussed: 26 Bureau of Educational Research (1) Supervision is the intellectual, professional, and emotional leadership of teachers. (2) Teaching is a highly non-repetitive process. (3) Little of value can come out of an argument in which each participant attempts to win. (4) Much of value can come from a cooperative exploration and search for truth with reference to the solution of problems which both participants want to solve. (5) The aim of teaching is to secure conditions under which learn- ing on the part of children takes place. (6) The basic psychological problem of supervision is to secure on the part of teachers an integration between what they think and what they do. Points (4) and (5) above need some elaboration. Point (4) touches the heart of the psychological situation when two people discuss a mat- ter of mutual experience and importance. If the search for truth is conducted merely to outwit or best an antagonist, then it tends to be neither fundamental nor entirely sincere. Truth is merely a weapon to use against an antagonist. If, on the other hand, both participants in a discussion make the discovery of truth the end and aim of their discus- sion, then distortion of truth for one individual's ends will not be a factor in the situation. The participants cease to be interested primarily in relationships to each other; antagonism disappears and is replaced by cooperative zeal for discovery. Point (5) sets the problem for cooperative study. An acceptance of it by both supervisor and teacher as the basic question for considera- tion in the supervisory interview also leads to a psychologically healthy situation both during the observed recitation and in the later conference. Neither supervisor nor teacher is primarily interested in what the teacher did during the recitation; their whole attention is fixed on the children; and their behavior becomes the starting point for a cooperative investigation. It must be granted that during the observation there will not be the situation of divided teacher attention which was criticized when the good-and-bad-point and check-list techniques were used. The teacher is psychologically free to concentrate on the job to be done — the stimu- lation and guidance of children's learning — because he knows that that will be the basis for the supervisory discussion. The sole aim of the supervisory conference becomes that of analyzing and evaluating the learning of the class, and of finding means to improve its quality and quantity. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 21 A Proposed Technique for Individual Supervisory Conferences. Let us therefore examine the technique which is being proposed. As in the other techniques discussed, the supervisor visits the teacher and remains for an entire recitation period. As will be indicated later (p. 46) usually preparation for the visit will have been made through the invitation of the teacher, and this preparation will presumably include making the supervisor aware of the way in which the lesson to be observed fits into the pattern of a sequence of recitations. During the period which the supervisor observes, both the mind of the teacher and the mind of the supervisor are focused on the same area of study. Both are concerned with what the children do. There is thus no conflict in attention and study during the recitation because this study is directed toward a common aim — to analyze the children's doings. The mind of the teacher is engrossed in an attempt to make his technique of teaching of such sort that the right kind of doings will be stimulated in the class. When the teacher sits down for the supervisory interview, there is little necessity for the principal to try to establish rapport with him. Rapport has already been established because of common interest and common desire to make a cooperative and exploratory study of the recitation. The situation therefore is not one of attack and defense in any sense. Moreover, it is important to notice that, whereas in the typical supervisory interview the supervisor is the aggressor and takes the lead in discussion, in the kind of interview proposed neither is the aggressor, and leadership at the very beginning may be assumed by either one. As a matter of fact, after this technique has been used for some time, it will be easy for a good supervisor to manage the interview in such a way that from the very beginning the teacher will take the lead in the discussion. This is in accord with our ideas of good teach- ing. If supervision is a form of teaching, as it should be, and if in good teaching the aim, purposes, and suggestions for activities come properly from the learner, then it seems obvious that in the supervisory interview the teacher rather than the supervisor should assume the main responsibility for guidance of discussion. Some Ideas from Personnel Work in Industry. In this connec- tion it will be worth while to examine the methods which have been developed by personnel workers in industry. The modern industrial plant recognizes that a high labor turnover is a very costly situation for a business. Therefore when a skilled worker is involved in difficul- ties with management, the modern industrial plant, instead of discharging him forthwith, arranges for him to have one or more in- 28 Bureau of Educational Research terviews with a personnel counselor. The methods used in such inter- views were recently described by the director of the personnel depart- ment of a large manufacturing company. He is a trained psychologist, and is trying to apply in his personnel work the things he has learned about the way the human mind behaves. Let us call him Dr. X. 3 The techniques which Dr. X has worked out are based on two main principles, the first of which has been discussed above; it is that one person seldom helps another by argument. Argument tends to crystallize the thinking of the person to whom you are talking and his mind-set becomes one of trying to find ways to defend himself rather than to discover the truth. The second principle is that a person will often find the answers to his own difficulties if these answers are within his competence to understand and if a wise counselor will stimulate him to talk and to search his own understanding. The technique of the interviews which Dr. X and the assistants he has trained conduct with the members of the plant personnel who are having difficulties is relatively simple. When employees come to con- sult them, the personnel staff never give advice. Its members never answer the questions: "What should I have done?" or "What would you have done under the circumstances?" Instead they get the em- ployees to talk under the stimulus of a friendly atmosphere and sympa- thetically worded questions. The testimony of Dr. X is that almost invariably the employees find the solution of their difficulties themselves. Frequently this solution simply could not have been found by the counselor, because he did not know all the pertinent facts about the employee. A case of this sort may be of interest. A young girl was in continual trouble with her foreman. The personnel director had several talks with her, using the technique out- lined above. Finally the girl discovered that the chief reason she had for disliking the foreman was that he looked just like her stepfather, who had been the petty tyrant of her childhood. Up to the time of this discovery she had been unaware herself of the reason for her trouble. Upon discovering it, she laughed, remarked how foolish it was for her to let a chance resemblance interfere with her happiness, and from then on she had no further trouble. From this illustration the inference should not be drawn that such foolish difficulties interfere with the success of many teachers. The implication is that it may often be true that a supervisor can not be aware, from observing a teacher, of just what the psychological 3 A detailed description of the use of the interview in business will be found in Elton Mayo, The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization, pp. 73-86, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1945. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 29 barriers are to his success. These barriers must often be discovered by the teacher himself, and the process of discovery may often be expe- dited by sympathetic supervisory interviews. Approaching a Study of the Lesson from the Doing of the Teacher. One further point should be made with respect to the kind of supervisory interviews we are describing. In this bulletin the statement has been made that the basic psychological problem of supervision is to secure in teachers an integration of doing and thinking. If we consider the situation in the supervisory interview from this point of view, we find that, as in the case of Soviet Russia discussed above, the point of departure consists of a series of doings — the recitation period. These then constitute the starting point for the supervisory in- terview, the main purpose of which is to discover whether these doings are consonant with sound principles of teaching. If they are, then good integration of thinking and doing in the future will be fostered, because the teacher has become aware of the soundness of his techniques in the light of the educational principles in which he believes. If the doings are not in accord with good educational thinking, then the supervisor is in a position both to assist the teacher toward better educational think- ing and also to work out with him new techniques of teaching, which are not advocated by the supervisor merely as a sort of "bag of tricks" but are illustrations of sound educational principles. Thus, when the teacher employs these techniques in the future, he will have both a guide in carrying them through and also a method of criticism of them if they do not prove successful. An Outline for the Study of a Recitation. It is agreed, then, that the supervisory interview begins with an examination of what the children have done and progresses toward a discussion of educational principles involved. It is desirable to have some sort of outline for studying the doings in the classroom. It may be granted that many out- lines may be possible and that it may be well for teachers and super- visor to work one out for themselves. In collaboration with Professor Milo B. Hillegas, Professor Emeritus of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, the writer has developed an outline for study of a recitation which he submits herewith, not as a prescription, but as a series of suggestions to supervisors and teachers. It is based on accepted principles of teaching and learning. It should be obvious that this outline is not based on any theory of chronological steps in a recitation; it is rather a guide sheet to help teacher and supervisor to analyze the various aspects of teaching and learning which are exemplified in the recitation. 30 Bureau of Educational Research One point about this outline should be borne in mind in reading the description of it in the following pages. It deals with the whole teaching-learning-classroom situation. A complete description of the meaning of all parts of the outline would therefore involve a thorough discussion of all phases of instruction in the light of modern ideals. Such a description would go far beyond the space available in this bulletin. Only enough detail is given in the succeeding pages to suggest to the reader the areas of modern educational theory into which study of the recitation in the light of the outline will lead the supervisor and teacher. For elaboration of the meaning of all these areas, other books on modern education should be consulted. For example, much research and experimentation has been done recently in the dynamics of group situations. The relations of indi- viduals to each other in group situations, the meaning of group leader- ship, the techniques of securing group motivation, and the methods of securing self-evaluation in a group — all these have been given ex- tensive study. This area of group relationships is involved at several points in the outline; but as was said above, in this bulletin the field can be given only a superficial treatment. A basic metabolism test is an important feature of the diagnosis of a physician's patient; but a description of the apparatus with some consideration of its use in diagnosis can not be a complete description of physical health and how to secure it. The outline, then, is simply a means for diagnosis and study of what goes on in the classroom; it can not be a complete program of remedial work. For the sake of clarifying the description presented on the follow- ing pages the entire outline is given below: OUTLINE FOR STUDYING A RECITATION I. Human Relationships A. Teacher to child B. Child to teacher C. Child to child II. Subject Matter A. Was it important? B. Was it authentic? C. Was it drawn from many sources? D. Was it suited to the comprehension of the children? III. The Children's Learning A. Motives 1. Did the motives grow out of the interaction of the children's minds and the subject matter? 2. How strong was the motivation? Supervision m the Elementary Schools 31 3. Were the motives such as exist to a considerable degree and in a pro- ductive way in adult life? B. Learning activities 1. Were the things the children did varied in character? 2. Were the quality and scope of the teacher's questions such as to stimu- late children's thinking? 3. Did the children have opportunities to cooperate with one another ? 4. Did the activities of the children show evidences that the learners were purposing and planning their activities in groups or as a committee of the whole? 5. Was a variety of sources used to enrich the thinking and learning of the children ? 6. Were constructive and creative activities used as a means of learning? IV. Conclusion of the Lesson A. Was there a clear conception at the end of the lesson concerning just what had been accomplished in it? B. Did the children have a clear conception of the next things to do? I. Human Relationships. The outline begins with an examina- tion of the personal human relationships in the classroom. So much has been written and said about these relationships in recent years that little more than a summary of accepted ideals need be stated here. 4 These ideals grow out of modern points of view with respect to the nature of children and of the learning process. The human relationships in the classroom may be divided into three categories, as indicated by the questions below. A. Are teacher-to-child relationships satisfactory; 7 The teacher is a leader, friend, and counselor to the pupils in his class, not a taskmaster or stern disciplinarian. He has authority, of course, but uses it in a humane and considerate way. Most important of all, the teacher exerts his leadership through stimulating the child to exercise his own initia- tive, purposes, and judgment, and then respecting these in the activities of the classroom. He avoids mannerisms of voice or conduct which give the impression of condescension or oversweetness. He does not use such epithets as "dear" or "darling" to the children, nor does he put his arm around them or touch them except when necessary. B. Are child-to-teacher relationships satisfactory f The child-to- teacher relationship is what would be expected from a proper teacher- to-child relationship. The child respects the teacher as an older, wiser, and more experienced member of the group, but does not feel fear or dread of him. The pupils learn early under good teaching procedures to feel respect for themselves and for their judgments and opinions. This 4 For recent studies dealing with human relationships in the classroom, see Willard C. Olson, "The Improvement of Human Relations in the Classroom," Childhood Education, 22:317-325, March, 1946; and Daniel Alfred Prescott, Emotion and the Educative Process, American Council on Education, 1938. 32 Bureau of Educational Research develops naturally if pupil initiative and pupil decisions are treated seriously and given due weight in classroom management. It is particularly important with respect to the relationships dis- cussed above that there be real honesty and sincerity on the part of the teacher. If the teacher attempts to fool the children into believing that they are making decisions, but actually guides them in such a way that they always decide what the teacher wishes them to, the children soon learn to recognize the deceit and lose all respect both for them- selves and for the teacher. C. Are healthy child -to -child relationships being developed? In the schools of the past, child-to-child relationships were not only not en- couraged, they were strictly forbidden. Whispering and note-passing were considered to be causes for disciplinary action. Child-to-child rela- tionships, therefore, were confined to the playground or to surreptitious activities. The teacher and children engaged in a sort of game in the classroom in which the children tried to "get away with" communica- tion with each other and the teacher tried to catch them at it. Of course, training such as this might be all very well for an au- tocracy where the whole duty of citizens is to comply with the orders and dicta of the autocrat. But in a democracy, where shared decisions are the cornerstone of desirable civic behavior, constant communication between the future citizens is the essence of good school learning. Therefore in the modern school children are constantly engaged in oc- cupations in which sound child-to-child relationships are developed. These may be in the form of classroom situations in which children offer to each other helpful and constructive criticisms; or they may be in situations in which children work together as groups, choosing their own leaders and learning to cooperate in a common enterprise. Professor Frank McMurry has stated that the best description of the atmosphere which should prevail in a classroom is that it approxi- mates the atmosphere of a good home. The result of the establishment of sound relationships in the three categories discussed above is the prevalence of a normal, natural atmosphere in the classroom in which friendliness, sincerity, and mutual cooperation are the prevailing features. A final word should be said about these human relationships in the classroom. They are all the results of gradual growth and development. At their best they can not be faked by the teacher for the supervisor's benefit. With respect to the treatment of subject matter, the teacher may be able to plan to "put on a show" and may succeed fairly well, but he can not do the same with the classroom relationships. Fear, sly- Supervision in the Elementary Schools 33 ness, ill-humor, and resentment are bound to be as observable to a trained supervisor as are their opposites of friendly respect and good nature. In many supervisory interviews, these relationships may be passed over with a mere word or two of discussion. Sometimes, however, they may give rise to a searching study by teacher and supervisor of the former's basic ideals of teaching and learning. II. Subject Matter. Having considered human relationships to the extent that is necessary, the teacher and supervisor next pass on to the second topic in the outline for study of a recitation. This concerns the subject-matter content of the lesson in the general, nontechnical sense of the term. The words "subject matter" are of course used by theorists in education to embrace all of the learnings of a lesson, con- comitant as well as direct. The term is used here, however, in its ordi- nary sense, meaning such content as the geography of China, the west- ward movement, or the meaning of a community. There are four basic questions which may be asked about the sub- ject-matter content of a recitation. A. Was it important? By this is meant, was it of a nature to give children a series of facts and ideas that are worth spending time to learn in this modern world? There is a group of theorists in education who believe this question should not be considered relevant. This group holds that the only con- sideration in the selection of subject matter is the question whether the child is deeply interested in it. If he is, then they say it is important to him and that is the only necessary criterion. This point of view might be defensible in a relatively static world in which there were few crucial national and international problems. But in the present confused and dangerous situation in which our world finds itself, there are so many critical meanings, understandings, and areas of information, a knowledge of which is essential for good citi- zenship in a democracy, that the question of importance with reference to these national and world affairs must be asked. Of course the above should not be construed to mean that there will not be some hours in a classroom which will be devoted to studying things which may be important to children at the moment but which are relatively unimportant to adult problems. What is here criticized is such a procedure as took place in a fifth grade several years ago, when the children gave all their social studies time for a year to the consideration of Byrd's expedition to the South Pole. Of course many useful and interesting ideas were learned by the children, and they 34 Bureau of Educational Research thoroughly enjoyed the year's work. But the fact is that in the foresee- able future the South Polar Regions are not of much significance to our world, and a year spent on studying them is a year largely wasted for the average child. B. Was it authentic ? By this is meant, would the subject matter be considered accurate as far as it goes by a specialist in the content field being studied? There are many recitations in which this criterion is violated. For example, a teacher conducted a series of recitations on the geography of Alaska, in which the approach was made through a study of gold mining. This approach is, of course, defensible. But the teacher and the children spent most of their time on the study of this particular industry, perhaps because it is rather colorful and spec- tacular. In so doing, the children acquired the general concept that gold represents the most important product of Alaska, a very erroneous idea, indeed. On one occasion, a recitation was devoted entirely to an attempt to answer the question, "Why are the people of the Iberian Peninsula so lazy?" Apart from the fact that consideration of such a question will tend to increase international misunderstandings, one may say with safety that no student of the Iberian people who really knows them would agree for one minute on the authenticity of the idea that they are lazy. This matter of authenticity is in part closely connected with the next question about the subject matter. C. Was it drazvn from many sources? In a rapidly changing world, textbooks are often out of date before they are printed or sold. To rely on one text, or on one source of information, such as an en- cyclopedia, is to run a serious risk that the children will acquire much misinformation. They should learn even in the elementary school to consult several sources of facts, and in particular to weigh the authority of an author and to note the date of his publication. This use of several sources of information is treated more in detail later in the outline (p. 40). D. Was it suited to the comprehension of the children? Of course almost any topic is capable of either simple or profound treatment. The above question raises the point whether the phases of the subject found in the recitation period were such as could be grasped by the children without undue strain or loss of interest. III. The Children's Learning. A. Motives. Having considered the human relationships and the subject matter observable in the recitation under consideration, the Supervision in the Elementary Schools 35 teacher and supervisor now turn their attention to the learning of the children. This study begins with an examination of the children's motives or purposes. Under this heading, the first question may be, why are these children doing what they are doing? A number of dif- ferent reasons may be observed in the study of classroom procedures. Perhaps the commonest reason why children do what they do during a recitation is that they have been told to do so. In other words, the purposes of the children are merely to conform. Their motives do not lie within their own drives or desires, but spring from their natural docility and willingness to conform to what an adult wants them to do. Another reason why children do what they do is often that of ob- taining some reward or goal which is extrinsic to the learning involved. Our schools have been permeated with this kind of external motiva- tion. Some make a great fetish of the report card and constantly hold before children the motive of making good grades to take home and show to their parents. Other rewards are in the form of stars for good work, display of 100% papers, notes of commendation to parents, and even early dismissal from school on Friday afternoon. Parenthetically, attention should be called to the implication of this last reward that school is so unpleasant a place that one of the highest pleasures which can be offered as a reward is extra freedom from the classroom ! Another kind of motive is that of competition with one's fellows. An especially objectionable form of this type of motivation was ob- served in a school where a teacher was consistently using contests be- tween the boys and girls as motivation. Surely, psychologists are enough agreed that sex relationships and particularly sex antagonisms in pre- adolescent children cause enough trouble without being stimulated by teaching procedure. Two points should be noted about competition as a motive. First, while it is true that in many aspects of modern life in America compe- tition is a constant motive, yet it must be remembered that in many other activities cooperation rather than competition is an essential for the continuation of our culture. Two men may compete against each other in the automobile business, but in Rotary Club, the official board of the church, the Community Chest drive, or the lodge, these men co- operate in securing ends which both recognize as worth while in modern American community life. To explain American culture only in terms of competition is to give a most one-sided and inaccurate picture of it. Since American cultural patterns do require cooperation, it seems obvious that the schools should train children to attain habits of effec- tive participation in group activities. On this point, after an extensive series of experimental studies, Mailer says, 36 Bureau of Educational Research Cooperativeness as measured by our tests is influenced by environmental factors. It is a habit pattern acquired in accordance with the general laws of learning. The frequent staging of contests, the constant emphasis upon the making and breaking of records, and the glorification of heroic individual achievement and championship in our present educational system lead toward the acquisition of the habit of competitiveness. The child is trained to look at the members of his group as constant competitors and urged to put forward a maximum effort to excel them. The lack of practice in group activities and community projects in which the child works with his fellows for a common goal precludes the formation of habits of cooperativeness and group loyalty. 5 Second, it should be noted that competition in school tasks places a premium on the kind of intelligence which is necessary for success in them. This intelligence is unequally distributed among a heterogeneous group of school children. Special rewards, therefore, for competitive school achievement give the children recognition who have inherited good school intelligence and penalize the children who have in- herited poor school intelligence. Mam- educators maintain that it is unfair to reward or condemn a child for having been born of ancestors who do or do not have a particular kind of intelligence. Another series of motives arises from the nature of children and the nature of school subject matter. If the school subject matter is wisely chosen and the right kind of approach to it is made by the teach- ers, then the motives for study arise out of the interaction of the nature of the children with the subject matter. No one ever had to as- sign a child to play with an electric train. All that is necessary is to bring the child into contact with an electric train and let him watch it work for a few minutes. The motive for playing with the train grows from the natural interaction of the child's nature with the subject matter of electric trains. There are three points about children which are of great significance in developing sound motives for elementary school work. The first of these is the fact that children like activity, not only physical but mental. They really enjoy using their minds. As Professor Franklin Baker of Teachers College, Columbia University, often said, they are "intellec- tually hospitable." They have an omnivorous curiosity reaching far beyond the things of their immediate environment. Second, children enjoy physical manipulation of materials. Again and again, therefore, they have in constructive and creative activities connected with school work an abiding satisfaction and strong motive for school work. Third, rather extensive research shows that when people work together as a group in discussing what is to be done and reach cooper- 5 Julius Bernard Mailer, Cooperation and Competition, p. 163, Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1929. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 37 ative decisions with reference to group goals, the motivation from such decisions is very strong and produces more actual change in behavior than is the case when only individual motivation is the activating force. 6 It is not implied above that all school tasks can be accomplished under the drive of intrinsic motivation growing out of the subject matter itself. For example, it is hard to conceive that learning the number facts can be the result of motivation arising from the subject matter. In cases of this sort, extrinsic motivation, such as the use of number games, may be introduced, but the teacher should be aware that this is extrinsic motivation and that it should be used only when necessary. A very wise student of child psychology, Dr. Naomi Norsworthy, used to say to her classes at Teachers College many years ago, "Use the highest motive that will work." Her implication, of course, was that the teacher will never use extrinsic and trivial motivation unless absolutely necessary. He will recognize such motives as crutches. To walk with a crutch is better than not to walk at all, but the sooner the crutch may be discarded, the better for all concerned. In the supervisory situation we are visualizing, then, teacher and supervisor in the supervisory interview first turn their attention to motives. They ask themselves such questions as the following: (1) Was the motive under which the children were carrying on their learning activities one which grew out of the interaction of the children's minds and the subject matter, or was it externally imposed? If the latter, why was this true? With this subject matter was the external imposition necessary? Could a different method of approach have produced intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation ? In what ways in the future can the teacher improve the source of the children's motivation ? (2) How strong was the motivation? Did it carry through the period, or did it lag toward the middle or end? If the latter, was the fault with the motive or with the learning activities ? (3) Were the motives such as exist in a considerable degree and in a productive way in adult life? Or were they academic and "school- teacherish"? The implications of this question are obvious to a stu- dent of psychology. If the motives under which children work in school are academic and connected only with a school situation, then they will not be likely to carry over to post-school life. No school can or should 6 For a definite experiment with respect to this point, see Kurt Lewin, "Forces Behind Food Habits and Methods of Change," The Problem of Changing Food Habits, pp. 35-65, Bulletin of the National Research Council, No. 108, October, 1943. For a summary of research dealing with the same problem, see Kurt Lewin, "The Dynamics of Group Action," Educational Leadership, 1:195-200, January, 1944. These references are equally applicable to points (3) and (4), pp. 40-41. 38 Bureau of Educational Research expect to teach children in the brief period of their school life all that they will need to know for the period of adulthood. The school should, to be sure, equip children with the tools of learning and with certain basic information, but its real purpose should go far beyond that. It should also equip them with many and varied interests, so that their afterlives will become long periods of continued learning. Whether or not the school does this is primarily a matter of the learning motives to which the school has taught the children to be sensitive. As Rein, the disciple of Herbart, expressed it, "The aim of instruction is not the pro- duction of many-sided knowledge but of many-sided interest." 7 B. Learning Activities. The teacher and the supervisor, having ex- amined the children's motives in the light of the above or similar questions, now pass on to a consideration of the learning activities. The first questions concerned why the children did what they did; the second questions deal with the quality of what they did. The recitation period may be thought of as a series of doings. Some of these are overt and may be easily observed by anyone. Others are mental doings and occur within the children themselves. These, of course, are not actually ob- servable; they have to be inferred from overt behavior — from what the children do and say. They are all doings, however, and as in the search for the answers to the questions about motivation, the supervisor and teacher begin with these doings and then study the principles of teaching involved. Again the supervisory interview may be guided by a series of questions: (1) Were the things the children did varied in character? Too many recitations consist merely of questions by the teacher and answers by the children. Such lessons tend to be dull and lifeless, in part at least, because they lack variety in children's activities. Some varieties of ac- tivities are discussed below (p. 41) in connection with other questions. But at this point, it would be well to note that the objection to a reci- tation consisting merely of questions and answers does not mean that the technique should never be used; on the contrary, it is a very useful one. As a technique, however, it is worthy of examination. (2) Were the quality and scope of the teacher's questions such as to stimulate children's thinking? Many years ago a great student of teaching and learning, Colonel Parker, wrote, The kind and intensity of the conscious activities (thinking) on the part of the pupils should always govern the questions ; that is, the order of questioning should be the order of the evolution of thought. The teacher, ever on the alert and watch- ing the mental acts of his pupils, should so shape his questions as to use the mental 7 Wilhelm Rein, Outline of Pedagogics, p. 117, C. W. Bardeen, 1895. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 39 properties and powers of his pupils in the best possible way. Pupils generally possess a great many isolated facts which may be brought together and related by judicious questioning. Never force an answer, but be sure your question arouses some definite, conscious activity, then give pupils time to think. The great art of questioning may be entirely misdirected, like all other good things in teaching, by using it as a means of verbally memorizing words. A ques- tion, too often, demands an answer, not a thought; the pupil is aroused to mental action in recalling words and sentences already learned, or in framing a new sentence which he suspects is required. This terrible fault lies wholly in the teaching and not in the pupils, for they dearly love to think when they have a chance ; but alas ! the habit of recalling words induced and fostered by injudicious teaching takes strong hold upon them and in school, at least, keeps them from thinking. The one serious inquiry teachers should make at each step of a recitation is: Do I ask this question for the thought or for the answer? The difference between the two purposes is world-wide. One presents the artist teacher dealing with the best interest of the child ; the other an artisan teacher having in mind the personal interests of a high per cent upon a verbal memory examination. 8 In the light of the above quotation, let us consider the two examples of questions below. (a) Where is New York located ? (b) Do you think you can show the class why a city located where New York is would be sure to grow into a great city? To answer the first question requires only recollection of a few facts and a single statement answer. To answer the second may demand days of study of maps, printed material in both geography and history texts and other references, and a weaving together of many facts and ideas. The answer may require demonstrations before the class, the construc- tion of graphs or models, and a lengthy presentation of these and other materials. If a recitation consists chiefly of questions of the (a) type, answered quickly and well, or poorly, by the pupils, then the class doings are not likely to be in accord with the best ideals of educational method. For good learning in any field is never the mere accumulation of a vast number of unrelated facts. Good learning always consists of the associa- tion of many facts and ideas into clusters or configurations of meaning. It will be noted that Colonel Parker's statement places emphasis on thought. The expression "thought questions" is very glibly used by authors and lecturers in education, but the meaning of the expression is seldom examined. The young teacher is urged to ask thought ques- tions, but when he asks what these are, the only answer he is likely to get is that they are questions requiring thought, which is not very helpful. And yet a relatively simple answer may be given to the teacher — not one, to be sure, which comprehends the whole problem of think- ing in the classroom, but one which may serve as a useful guidepost. 8 Francis Wayland Parker, How to Study Geography, pp. 103-104, D. Appleton and Company, 1889. 40 Bureau of Educational Research This answer lies in the fact that thinking is in essence a process of seeing relationships between facts and ideas in the light of a problem and then drawing reasonable conclusions. A thought question is one which demands that the answer shall show ability to see such relation- ships and to draw valid conclusions. And the relationships may be com- plicated, requiring many subsidiary questions and answers, as is the case with question (b) above. So the supervisor and teacher may examine the questions used by the teacher in the recitation under discussion to determine whether they did demand that the children should see relationships between facts and ideas in the light of a problem and to answer the problem as a result. Such an examination again demands an analysis of the doings in the recitation in the light of the thinking which should have been prominent in the mind of the teacher during the lesson. A third question has a bearing on one of the principles laid down in the discussion of motivation. It is as follows: (3) Did the children have an opportunity to cooperate with one another either in small committees or in a committee of the whole? The need for learning to cooperate in the interdependent and demo- cratic culture of America today has been dealt with so frequently and at such great length by other writers that it need only be mentioned in this bulletin. Obviously if the heart of our culture is this cooperation, then children in elementary schools need to have constant practice in it if they are to be prepared to take their places in the future as trained and intelligent citizens in our society. A fourth question for supervisor and teacher grows out of the third. Obviously one aspect of cooperative action consists in setting the goals for the action and planning progress. (4) Did the activities of the children show evidences that the learn- ers were purposing and planning their own activities in groups or as a committee of the whole? Some subsidiary questions on this point might be: Were the doings of the children dictated by the teacher alone? Who set the goals for the learning activities? Was the relationship between activities and goals clearly seen by the children, and were the activities planned by them to achieve these goals? (5) Was a variety of sources used to enrich the thinking and learn- ing of the children? It is well recognized today that no one textbook contains all the material about any topic which should be considered by the learners. It is equally recognized that children should learn very early in their school careers to consult different sources, to weigh their value and authenticity, and to assemble, into a meaningful thought- Supervision in the Elementary Schools 41 whole, materials from many sources. Many of these may not be books at all; they may be pictures, models, or other nonverbal materials. So the lesson which is based solely on one text is not likely to be in accord with the best principles of modern teaching. A final question about the learning activities of the children is allied to the one stated above. (6) Were constructive and creative activities used as a means of learning? As has been stated above, too many recitations are still mere tedious successions of questions and answers. Just as many sources of material are used in a modern classroom, many activities are employed in the process of learning. They include making graphs and charts; making picture maps, making maps of papier mache, clay, or salt and flour; making models; giving dramatizations, radio talks and programs, and dramatic plays; drawing and painting pictures and murals; and presenting debates and special reports of individuals or groups. Whether many such activities are used in a classroom depends in part, of course, on the supervisor and the administration. Activities re- quire a workbench, tools, easels, paints, clay, cardboard, and other ma- terials. In using criterion (6), therefore, the supervisor may realize that he, rather than the teacher, may be at fault. By those who do not understand modern education, the types of activities mentioned above may be thought of as mere busywork or as concessions to the children to make the classroom and its work enjoy- able. While such work is enjoyable, its purpose is only secondarily to produce this result. Its main purpose is to make learning more effective. Let us see why this is true. A child is a complex structure, consisting of a brain, nervous system, glands, organs of seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling, and a sense of touch. This enormously complex structure reacts as a whole to situa- tions, in school and out. Learning is not a function merely of certain parts of the mind; it is a function of the child's whole complex struc- ture. The wider the area of the child's structure which participates in a desired learning, the more effective the learning will be. But it is not enough merely to include constructive and creative activities in the curriculum. The quality of these enterprises is funda- mentally important and should be scrutinized with care by the super- visor and the teacher. One aspect of this quality lies in the answer to the question of whether the activities are the result of teacher dictation, or whether they grow out of a need felt by the children to clarify their own thinking and are therefore the results of the children's purposing. Another aspect of the quality of activities is concerned with their 42 Bureau of Educational Research content. If, for example, an elaborate sand-table project is carried out, the question should be considered whether the learnings of the children were comensurate with the amount of time and effort expended by them in the work. A study of these two aspects of the quality of the activities will reveal whether they are mere busywork or whether they have real educational significance. However much children may enjoy them, they are not justified unless they do have this significance. There is another aspect of some learning activities which is im- portant. It is often easy to be glib in describing a thing in words; but to construct a replica or a model of the thing requires an amount of accu- rate information far beyond that of a verbal description. Thus if a person were studying medieval life, he might give a very fluent descrip- tion of a medieval manor without much accurate knowledge. But if he were provided with cardboard, paste, and scissors and asked to make a model of a manor, he might find that his knowledge was totally inade- quate and that his efforts to construct the model would require him to re-read and re-study materials in print and in pictures of which he thought he had a good knowledge. An example from actual classroom work will further illustrate this point. Some years ago, a class was studying the development of textile weaving. They had learned about the invention of the flying shuttle and were much intrigued with the idea. One member of the class had made a little loom, using sticks for the frame, and perforated pieces of cardboard for the heddles. The teacher confessed to a visitor, how- ever, "We can not understand how the flying shuttle works. It can not run on a track or it would interfere with the movement of the heddles. What does it rest on, particularly after it has made its journey between the alternate threads of the woof?" If we examine the situation in this case, we note that the children had studied about an invention which revolutionized weaving, and they probably would have been able to give verbal descriptions of the mech- anism. But when they constructed an actual model needing this mechan- ism, they realized that a sharper clarification of their information was necessary for accurate understanding. IV. Conclusion of the Lesson. When supervisor and teacher have examined first the motivation as it was manifested in the recitation and then have considered what the children actually did in the light of the above questions, they may then turn to the third and final part of the outline for study of the lesson. Here, two questions may be asked in studying a recitation. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 43 A. Was there a clear conception at the end of the lesson concerning just what had been accomplished in it? Until they have had much prac- tice children do not find it easy to summarize a discussion or other type of learning period. But the writer is convinced it is a very fruitful habit of study to state in a few words what an individual or a group have learned and where they stand at the end of the learning period. For this reason, a few minutes should be reserved at the end of a period of group study to draw together the elements of the discussion into a clear summary of progress. That children can learn to do this, even in the lower grades, has been proved in many classrooms where the tech- nique has been tried; and children so trained will have learned an im- portant habit of study which will be useful to them throughout their school careers. B. Did the children have a clear conception of the next things to do? There has been much discussion in the past concerning lesson as- signments. Some writers and lecturers have actually advocated that the next day's work should be assigned at the beginning of the current day's recitation. A professor of education has stated in his classes, "The as- signment constitutes the marching orders to the class. It can not be too definite." The implications of such views are obvious. They are, in the first place, that the teacher is to do all the planning; second, that the teacher imposes tasks on the children, regardless of whether they are willing and eager, or reluctant, to accept them; third, that all the children should do the same things; and fourth, that an assignment must be so definite that no place is left for the initiative of the pupils. All of these points of view would be rejected by the modern theorist in education. Professor Frank McMurry said years ago in his classes, "The ideal assignment to a class would be as follows: 'All right, children, we know what we have done and where we are now so we must know what we need to do next. Let's do it.' " Let us note the implications of this point of view. First, it implies that any one recitation period is a part of an ongoing series of learning activities; that it is vitally related both to what has preceded it and to what must follow. Second, it implies that the children have had a part in planning the whole activity and therefore have a concept of the necessary sequence of thinking and doing. Third, it implies that wide latitude may be expected in the activities of the individual children. Finally, it implies that a good summary of what has already been done has been made and that the children are almost as well aware as the teacher of the present status of the class's learning and can build their new learnings on the old. 44 Bureau of Educational Research How Teachers May Use the Outline to Study Their Own Work. Earlier in this bulletin it was stated that the technique of supervision which consists of observation of a lesson by the supervisor followed by a supervisory conference constitutes only one part of the whole field of supervision and not perhaps the most important one. In the light of this statement it may seem that a disproportionate amount of space has been devoted to this technique. The amount of attention given to the tech- nique is justified on three grounds: First, since there has been a continuous emphasis in this bulletin on the idea that the aim of supervision is the improvement of instruc- tion and that in that improvement it is essential that there be a meeting of minds of the teacher and supervisor, it seems obvious that the con- cepts of good teaching held by teacher and supervisor should be clear and should be shared by both. This necessity permeates every one of the supervisory techniques. Therefore, the outline we have presented for studying a recitation, or a similar one worked out by the teachers and supervisor themselves, would appear to be a basic need for a com- plete program of supervision. Unless there is agreement on the nature of the process to be improved and the method of studying it, teachers and supervisor will continuously find themselves thinking and talking at cross-purposes. Second, it has been established that teaching is a highly non-repet- itive process. Any study of a lesson observed by a supervisor is there- fore useless unless it provides guidance for future recitations; and at most of these recitations no supervisor will be present to help the teacher to study his work, as is done in the supervisory interview. To improve his teaching, therefore, a teacher must be professionally capable of self-study, self-appraisal, and self-direction. He must be provided with a clear-cut method of studying his work, of deciding where it is strong and weak, and of determining methods of improve- ment. The outline presented, if utilized in a number of supervisory con- ferences so that the teacher is familiar with it, will furnish the basis for such self -study and self-improvement. It will provide a teacher. with a method of diagnosis. Third, the formal class visitation and succeeding conference, as has been stated previously, constitute only a part of the help which a good supervisor will give to individual teachers. Informal conferences be- tween an individual teacher and a good supervisor will occur frequently. They may last only a few minutes and concern a very specific problem. The teacher and supervisor may meet in the hall before school and have an opportunity for a brief chat; or they may meet after school or during Supervision in the Elementary Schools 45 a recess period. Sometimes the supervisor may drop into a teacher's class after school and ask, "What interesting things are you doing now with your class?" Often a teacher may ask for a conference with the supervisor in his office after the school day is over or during a free period. It is the testimony of many good supervisors that such informal conferences are extremely effective in improving instruction. Because of their spontaneity they are likely to develop from a true felt need on the part of the teacher, and therefore the mind-set of the teacher is such that he will obtain real profit from them. But these informal conferences are likely to be effective or ineffec- tive in proportion to the clarity with which the teacher has studied his own work and has diagnosed his own difficulties. If teacher and super- visor, moreover, are agreed on the method of such study and diagnosis, immediate rapport is established by the teacher's first question, and there is little or no time wasted in securing a sharing on the part of both participants in the conference of an understanding of the problem to be solved. From the standpoints, then, of the total development of a super- visory program, of furnishing the teacher with a method of studying and diagnosing his own work, and of making effective many informal conferences with the supervisor, it seems essential that there be agree- ment between instructional staff and the supervisor on the basic methods of approaching and examining the classroom activities of teacher and children. When Does a Supervisor Visit a Classroom? One final point with respect to individual diagnosis and help of teachers by the super- visor remains to be considered: When does a supervisor enter a class- room for a supervisory visit, and should the teacher be informed in advance of the intended visit? This is a very controversial question. There are two phases of the answer; first, as it concerns inexperienced teachers, and second, as it concerns experienced teachers. With the former group, it will be ad- mitted that inexperienced teachers may not know when they need help, and that the supervisor ought, therefore, to visit their classrooms fre- quently, with or without their invitations. Some of these visits will be of the formal type followed by a supervisory conference; some will be brief and informal. If the right supervisory relationship is established at once, some of these visits will be the result of the invitation of the new teacher; but the supervisor should not feel that he should wait for such an invitation. Knowing he is new to his work, the inexperienced 46 Bureau of Educational Research teacher who has been imbued with a true professional spirit in the teacher-training institution from which he has been graduated will feel no resentment if an experienced professional counselor makes an un- announced supervisory visit. If the young teacher does not have this professional spirit, he should not remain in the profession. A different situation obtains, however, with the experienced teacher. A supervisor should not enter the classroom of such a teacher for a formal supervisory visit except on the invitation of the teacher. The grounds on which this statement is based are as follows: First, improvement of the artistic, non-repetitive process of teach- ing must be the result of a desire on the part of the teacher for improve- ment. Essentially it must be self -improvement, not imposed improve- ment. If, therefore, a supervisor attempts to improve a teacher's work through classroom supervision and the attitude of the teacher is op- posed to the visit, then it would seem that the effort will be wasted. Second, if a teacher does not want a supervisory visit, not only will the time be wasted, but also the teacher is likely to show his resentment in his treatment of the pupils when the supervisor is not present, and thus children will suffer. While it is admitted that the children may be suffering anyway under poor teaching, yet if our earlier premises are true, this suffering will not be alleviated by an unwanted supervisory visit, but rather will be accentuated because of the resentment of the teacher. Third, those who work with teachers are in general agreement that the great majority of them possess a high degree of professional spirit. They really want to improve their work. They welcome eagerly real help from anyone who can give it to them. If, therefore, it becomes evident to the teachers in a school that the supervisor can and will really help them to improve, he will be so overwhelmed with invitations for supervisory visits that he will find they will occupy all the time he can assign to them. Finally, if classroom supervision were the only means of improving teaching, there might be a better excuse for the supervisor to impose unwanted visits on teachers. But this not the case. Much of the re- mainder of this bulletin will be devoted to methods of group super- vision in which all the teachers will participate; and if this group supervision is well done, it will reach both those teachers who want help and those who do not, but it will be done in such a way that the latter group will not have the same justification for feeling resentment that they do in imposed individual supervision. Survey Visits to Classrooms. One exception should be noted with respect to this principle of visiting the classrooms of experienced Supervision in the Elementary Schools 47 teachers without invitation. About once a year a good supervisor will make a survey of instruction in his school. The purposes of this survey will not be diagnosis and improvement of individual teachers, but will rather be to get a conception of the general status of instruction in the school. In many school surveys, the survey staff spends several days visiting elementary school classrooms in a school system. Often they may stay only ten or fifteen minutes in any one classroom. Such visits are utterly inadequate to enable one to pass a sound judgment on any individual teacher. But participants in surveys testify that these short visits are adequate to enable them to make judgments on the general soundness and professional health of the total instructional situation in a school system. This survey type of visit without teacher invitation is therefore justifiable. CHAPTER IV TECHNIQUES OF GROUP SUPERVISION When and Where Should Teachers' Meetings Be Held? In dis- cussing the methods and techniques of group supervision, certain prac- tical questions should be considered first. One of these which always arises concerns the time and place of meetings. Some schools arrange for brief meetings before school; others hold them during the noon hour. Neither of these times is really suitable unless the meeting is called to dispose quickly of purely routine matters. To discuss problems of educational importance requires a certain leisurely mental set which can not obtain in a group of people whose minds are divided between attention to what is going on around them and consideration of plans for the day's work. Nor can it obtain when the period for lunch and midday relaxation is interrupted by a meeting. To be of any real edu- cational significance, teachers' meetings should be held after school is over. The place for the meeting is also important. Physical comfort is almost a necessity if the mind is to be free to do its best work. Meet- ings held in a classroom in which the seats are designed for children are not likely to be conducive to the best mental effort of adults, many of whom will find the schoolroom furniture very uncomfortable. Every school should have a teachers' rest room, fitted with com- . fortable chairs, attractively decorated, and of adequate size. It is true that at present many schools do not have such a room; but all new schools should be planned to include such facilities; in many existing schools a little ingenuity in utilizing space will provide at least semi- adequate space and equipment. In many schools one custom has developed which seems to be a very wise one. On the day when a teachers' meeting is held, one or two mem- bers of the staff assume the responsibility of serving tea, coffee, and inexpensive cookies or cake before the meeting^Thus after a strenuous day in the classroom the teachers have a chance to relax for a few minutes and to acquire that leisurely mental set which is so conducive to mental exertion. A number of principals have testified to the efficacy of this custom and have spoken of the change of atmosphere it has pro- duced in the teachers' meetings in schools where it has been introduced. The frequency of teachers' meetings is another question which has had many answers. A meeting every two weeks should constitute the maximum, and one every month is probably adequate. Dates for^ the meetings should be set at the beginning of the school year, and the 48 Supervision in the Elementary Schools 49 schedule should be rigidly adhered to. It is unfair to teachers to make them hold themselves ready for a meeting at any time, for it makes it impossible for them to schedule their own private appointments. Let us suppose, then, that a school has set up a schedule of teachers' meetings, that they occur after school, that they are held in a comfort- able meeting place, and that they are preceded by a pleasant period of relaxation and light refreshments. What should be the nature of the meetings ? The Relationship of Supervisor to Teacher as a Teacher-Learner Situation. 1 To begin, let us note that in many respects the relation- ship of principal-supervisor to the teachers is strictly analagous to that of teacher to pupils. Many of the same principles which we embrace for classroom teaching obtain with equal force for teachers' meetings. There are then several principles of teaching and learning which should be prominent in the mind of the supervisor in planning the meetings. First, it.seems obvious that the meetings should be planned for the year and that their content should be sequential and well integrated^ Students in a graduate course in education /would complain bitterly and rightly if the individual lectures in the course were completely un- related and without sequence. This would be true, moreover, no matter how interesting each individual lecture might be. If a graduate course in education ought to have unity and sequence, so that it builds a thought structure in the minds of the students, it seems equally true that a year's teachers' meetings ought to have unity and sequence. Second, the teachers' meetings ought to have educational signifv _cance. Many teachers complain about meetings because they waste the time of the participants in the discussion of trivial matters of school routine. Such complaints are sound. Most schools now have duplicating machines; notices of a routine nature can be duplicated and sent to each teacher, and the results will not only be more effective than taking time in teachers' meetings for such matters, but will save the teachers' time for other matters of more personal or professional importance. All meetings devoted to routine are not condemned, and some routine mat- ters need to be the subject of faculty consideration, discussion, and agreement; but teachers' meetings devoted to routine matters should b e c ut to a minimum — certainly one or two a year should suffice. Third, if initiative in proposing, planning, and executing curricular projects is accepted as a responsibility of the whole group, including pupils and teacher, in the elementary school, then planning a year's 1 For a discussion and documentation of this point, see John Alexander Rorer, Principles of Democratic Supervision, pp. 37-40, Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia Univer- sity, 1942. 50 Bureau of Educational Research teachers' meetings should be a responsibility in which teachers should bear a large part. Moreover, the problem planned as the integrating center of the year's work should be one which the teaching group seriously feel needs solution. Fourth, if child activity in the elementary school is considered neces- sary for sound educational development, th en teacher act i vity should be considered necessary for a good year's program of teachers' meet- ings. In many schools the teachers' meetings consist of a series of lectures by the principal. Such a teaching procedure would be con- demned in an elementary school, because little learning by the chil- dren would result; does it not seem equally probable that such a series of lectures would be of little worth to a group of teachers? Tifth, it seems desirable that an extended period of study of a prob- lem or a group of related problems should be crystallized into some definite and usable form of result. In university circles, term papers are often required, and very often a term paper for a professional course constitutes a useful part of the permanent professional equip- ment of the teacher. In elementary schools booklets summarizing a unit which has been undertaken by the children are frequently made and serve two useful purposes; they demand a drawing together of the many elements of the unit into a coherent form and thus serve as a summary of the work, and second, such booklets are, in many schools, placed in the library for the use of oncoming classes. .j ^yea rVwo rk in teachers' meetin^Jhen, may well resu lt in one or . i _more reports which are duplicated and distributed to all the teachers. These reports constitute coherent summaries of various aspects of the year's study and at the same time become useful parts of the school's records to assist new teachers to fit into the thinking of the faculty group. The School Faculty as a Team. The above five general princi- ples with reference to a school's faculty meetings make it clear that the teachers in a school should be thought of as a real team in somewhat the same sense as an athletic team. Many schools are merely a collection of teachers, each of whom assumes responsibility for the work in one classroom, but has few or no relationships, except social, with other teachers in the building. In such schools, individual teachers may make professional progress, but they fail to feel the impetus for such progress which working with a group of professionally minded fellow teachers affords. 2 Moreover, in a school where there is little or no group con- 7 For a review of research on this point and a description of an experiment demonstrating its truth, see Samuel F. Klugman, "Cooperative Versus Individual Efficiency in Problem Solving," Journal of Educational Psychology, 35:91-100, January, 1944. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 51 sideration of educational problems, teachers are likely to differ radically in both philosophy and method of teaching, and the children, when they move from grade to grade, are sure to suffer. Many years ago, one of the professional baseball teams had as its manager one of the most famous stars of the game. The team numbered among its ranks some of the most outstanding and brilliant players in the league. Yet this team ended the season in undisputed possession of the lowest place in the league. The manager simply could not get the players to cooperate as a team. The faculty of a school in many respects is like a baseball team. Even if the individual teachers are so good that they might almost deserve the name of teaching impressarios, yet the work of the school may not be superior unless the teachers work together. Human beings are gregarious. Normal members of the species do their best work when they are a part of a like-minded group, working on matters of common interest. Several studies have been made which seem to prove conclusively that groups are more efficient in solving a problem of common interest than any individual member of the group would be (see p. 37). Selecting the Problems for a Year's Teachers' Meetings. In con- sidering the actual program of planning and procedure, the first question which naturally arises is: What are the sources and nature of the problems for a year's study in teachers' meetings, and how should they be formulated? The expression "felt need" has been a common one for many years in educational methodology. It indicates the situation which should ob- tain in the mind of the learner at the beginning of the series of learning experiences. It should also be descriptive of the attitude of a group of teachers when they embark on a year's teachers' meetings. But it should be noted that there is nothing in the expression which indicates the source of the feeling of need. There are some needs which make them- selves felt because of basic psychological or physiological urges, such as the need for food or for sex gratification. But these needs are relatively few in number and make small contribution toward the process of learning those things which are needed either in the lives of a group of elementary school children or in the lives of a group of teachers. The sources of most of our intellectual needs fall into three main classifica- tions; actual experiences in connection with a series of connected activi- ties; vicarious experience through reading; or stimulative discussion, led by a wise and skilful leader and resulting in strong group motiva- tion (see p. 40). 52 Bureau of Educational Research Thoughtful teachers are constantly brought to a feeling of need for better ways of teaching just by their own analysis of their methods of teaching. The teaching act is of itself stimulative to a good teacher. But the fact remains that teaching may also become so routine and humdrum an occupation that the teachers who ought to feel the most need to improve may become the most complacent in their satisfaction with the ways in which they have been teaching for years. A new supervisory officer, therefore, must study his group with care before he attempts to secure worth-while suggestions for a year's teach- ers' meetings, for if he asks for suggestions and none come, he may be in a much more difficult position than if he had not asked. The fol- lowing procedure is therefore suggested for a supervisor who assumes a new position in a school. He should make up his mind that the first year may well be spent in getting acquainted with his new job and with the personnel with whom he is to work. The number of teachers' meetings during this year may be few and called only when there are some special problems which demand them. An early meeting should be devoted to an explanation of the meaning of the survey type of classroom visitation described above and a request for a spirit of good-natured and cheerful understanding of the purpose of the visits. The supervisor should also express his de- sire to be helpful in every way possible to the teachers and should in- dicate his willingness to confer with them or to be called into a classroom for individual supervisory visits and conferences. During this first year he should do the best he can to respond to any requests for such help. He must remember that he is very much on trial with the teachers during this year and that the first request for assistance is probably more crucial than any he will ever receive in his work with this group of teachers. The word will be passed on to the entire teaching corps as to whether he succeeds or fails in giving real help on the occasion of this first request. If he assumed the role of supervisor at the beginning of a school year, then during the fall of this first year he would make his survey visits and record his impressions for his own future guidance. He may discuss some of his conclusions with the teachers on the occasion of a midwinter meeting, but his statements should be carefully guarded and should deal more with the good things he has seen rather than with the inferior ones. During the late winter or early spring he may well institute a testing program using standard tests. These tests are now so well recognized as to character and function that most teacher groups will not question their desirability; but if this is not true with an individual corps of teachers, then a meeting should be devoted to a discussion of how Supervision in the Elementary Schools 53 standard tests are made, what their values and shortcomings are, and how results should be interpreted. Some readers may think that the suggestion that an entire year be taken by the supervisor to get acquainted with the teachers and to pre- pare them to embark on such a policy of teachers' meetings as has been described above constitutes too great a waste of time. This is not the case. Far more school officers have failed and perhaps been dismissed from their jobs because they have gone too fast than because they have gone too slow. Stimulation of people toward a line of action can not be hurried if it is to be a real and deep stimulation. It may be easy to secure acquiescence from teachers with respect to a line of action, but many an administrator has waked up one day to realize that the acqui- escence was mere lip service, and that there was no real acceptance of the line of action — no real feeling of need to guarantee a continuance of the activity. As a result, when the novelty of the work wore off, com- plaints and lethargy vitiated the program and the administrative officer was in the position of either dropping it or of driving his teachers into continuance. Selecting a Topic for the Second Year. In the spring the topic for the next year's meetings should be selected. Whatever the source of the feeling on the part of the teachers of the need which dictates the selection of the problem for a year's teachers' meetings, it should be formulated clearly. This formulation should be a joint responsibility of supervisor and teachers. It should be done in a teachers' meeting and should grow out of the discussion of the whole group. This topic may grow out of any of the following: (1) The testing program may suggest topics for study. For ex- ample, if test results show that in arithmetic computation the school's record is good but in problem-solving it is poor, then the question of the improvement of means of teaching children to solve arithmetic problems may be adopted. If the tests show uniformly low scores in reading, then these scores may be interpreted in the light of the results of intelligence tests, and the teachers may decide to spend a year study- ing the problem of teaching reading to children of low intelligence. If scores on such mechanical aspects of the curriculum as spelling, pen- manship, and arithmetic computation are satisfactory or high, while those on reading comprehension and social studies are low, then the problem of finding a better balance between form and content teaching may be selected. (2) Another source of suggestions for the subsequent year's meet- ings may consist of stimulation of the thinking of the teachers by the 54 Bureau of Educational Research supervisor. In informal conversation with the teachers he may drop a hint from time to time about the needs of the school in a specific direc- tion. Wise and friendly discussions at a midwinter meeting concerning his survey visits may direct the thinking of the teachers into a desirable channel. (3) One supervisor was convinced that the instruction in geogra- phy in the school under her direction was poor chiefly because the teachers knew little of the modern interpretation of geography as a study of the interrelationships between man and his natural environ- ment. The teachers were still interpreting the study of geography as an endless memorization of boundaries, products, and locations. This su- pervisor had a map of a hypothetical continent mimeographed, showing latitude, longitude, and mountain ranges. Then she worked out a series of questions about the climate of each section of the continent. She dis- tributed the map and questions to the teachers and suggested that they might want to discuss the answers at a teachers' meeting. The teachers found their knowledge of geography utterly insufficient to answer the questions because the answers required geographical thinking instead of remembering. A teachers' meeting was held and as a result of the meeting, the teachers expressed the desire for a series of meetings de- voted to the exploration of new meanings and emphases on geography. (4) Another supervisor felt that the teachers under her guidance were not developing in their classrooms the kind of constructive and creative enterprises so much valued in modern education. She therefore made a true-false test on activities, with suggestions for professional reading on the topic. The teachers were asked to mark each statement in the test true or false and to come to a meeting prepared to defend their answers. In the letter which accompanied the test, the supervisor told the teachers that many of the test elements involved moot points on which there was a difference of opinion even among experts; and she also assured them that she was not going to collect the tests or make any use of them to judge individual teachers. This test developed so active a discussion at the teachers' meeting that another meeting was needed to complete the discussion, and then the teachers expressed a desire to make an extended study of the subject of modern ideals con- cerning learning activities. Kinds of Problems for a Year's Teachers' Meetings. The kinds of problems with which a year's teachers' meetings may be concerned are almost infinitely varied. The following are samples, but the list could be many times as long and still not be exhaustive. Supervision in the Elementary Schools 55 (1) What series of textbooks shall we select for a given field? (2) What is our basic philosophy of teaching? (3) How should we develop and use informal objective tests? (4) What steps should we take to improve our instruction in some particular field? (5) What principles and techniques should we follow in teaching by units of work? (6) How can we apply the latest findings of child psychology? (7) What should be our standards of classification and promotion? (8) How can we develop a sound plan for pupil participation in self-government ? (9) What kind of report cards should we have? (10) How can we develop in our pupils an understanding of the democratic way of life? (11) How can we improve the interpersonal relationships in our classrooms? (12) What should be the ideal relationships between school and community, and how can we improve those which obtain in our own situation ? To recapitulate, then, recommendations with respect to teachers' meetings as a method of group supervision may be stated as follows: The meetings consist of an integrated attack lasting for a year or more on some basic problem of instruction; this problem concerns a felt need on the part of the teachers and is selected by them in collaboration with the supervisor; a complete schedule of meetings is made for a semester or a year; the meetings are held after school in a place where teachers can be physically comfortable; and they are preceded by a brief social period during which the participants in the discussion have an opportunity to relax and thus to prepare themselves for the coming professional discussion. Evaluation of the Results of Teachers' Meetings. Just as it was suggested earlier that a recitation period ought to end with a summary and evaluation of what had been accomplished, so teachers should from time to time summarize and evaluate the progress they have made in their teachers' meetings. This should certainly be done at the end of a school year, and the evaluation may lead to the selection and formula- tion of the problem for the succeeding year's work. Integrating Thinking and Doing Through Group Supervision. It has been repeatedly stated in this bulletin that the basic psychological 56 Bureau of Educational Research problem of supervision is to secure in the teachers an integration of thinking and doing. An examination of the list above will lead one to the conclusion that the study of such problems will demand of teachers an extensive consideration of theories of method. The emphasis in group supervision tends to be laid, therefore, on changing the thinking of teachers. This is to be expected, because in general, the participants in teachers' meetings have not shared a common experience in doing, and the approach to their study must of necessity, therefore, be from the thinking angle. But one must never lose sight of the basic psycho- logical problem of securing integration of thinking and doing, or the teachers' meetings may degenerate into mere abstract and theoretical discussions which many of the teachers will do little toward applying in their work in the classroom. What, then, are some of the means which may be adopted to insure that changes of thinking induced by the teachers' meetings may be translated into changes in their class- room procedures? Two methods are suggested below: giving demon- stration lessons and making up bulletins and reports. Demonstration Lessons. One of the most valuable means for accomplishing the aim of integrating thinking and doing is the demon- stration lesson. Let us suppose that a group of teachers has been studying the improvement of ability to solve problems in the field of arithmetic. They have discovered from their reading and discussions that one reason why children have difficulty in problem-solving is that many problems are remote from their life experiences. As a result the details of the problem are relatively meaningless to the children, who therefore feel no strong motive for getting the answer. Let us also suppose that a method of remedying the situation has been discussed; that this method consists of reworking some of the problems in the textbook, using the same arithmetic processes, but substituting for the situation described in the textbook conditions with which the children are familiar. An example will illustrate this point. Here is a problem as it appeared in a textbook: John lives in a big city. In the block where he lives there are five apartment houses. In John's apartment building there are 65 people; and in the other four there are 50, 78, 46, and 49 people. What is the average number of people living in one apartment building in John's block? If this problem were used in a small town in central Illinois, its data would be beyond the experience of the children. But they are familiar with cornfields and know how important a good crop is for everyone in their neighborhood, town dweller as well as farmer. Data concerning the actual number of bushels of corn per acre produced on Supervision in the Elementary Schools 57 the surrounding farms would be easy to secure. From these data a num- ber of problems in finding averages would be easy to make, and the answers would be of interest to the children. For example: Mr. Jones, who has the farm at the east edge of our town, used to buy ordinary seed corn to plant. For five years the number of bushels of corn which he raised from his land were: 45, 38, 39, 27, and 52. Now Mr. Jones buys hybrid seed corn. For the last five years his average yields of corn per acre have been: 52, 44, 47, 41, and 61. What was the average yield of corn per acre when ordinary seed corn was used? What was the average when hybrid seed corn was used? How much larger was the average yield per acre from hybrid corn? To return now to the use of demonstration lessons, we will suppose that the above method of enriching arithmetic problems has been dis- cussed in a teachers' meeting. As theory it seems sound. But if one teacher makes a special attempt to apply the theory in practice and pro- duces some ingenious arithmetic materials for his pupils, he may be asked to share his ideas and methods of work with his colleagues by means of a demonstration lesson. The observation of this lesson and discussion of it afterwards will be a very fruitful means of integrating thinking and doing. Some Problems in Arranging Demonstration Lessons. Several questions always arise about demonstration lessons. First, should they be given during school time or at the regular after-school period set aside for the teachers' meetings? It is more satisfactory if the latter course is followed. If a demonstration lesson is given during the school day, the other classes must be dismissed to enable all teachers to be present, and the dismissal of children from school is always a ques- tionable procedure. Moreover, children enjoy participating in demon- stration lessons and are glad to stay after school for them. There are many instances in which children have given up their Saturday morn- ings or have come together during the summer vacation to take part in a demonstration. To be sure, the matter should be put on a voluntary basis for the children, but there will undoubtedly be plenty of volunteers. The second question is whether teachers will be willing to teach be- fore their colleagues, and if not, whether the supervisor should teach the demonstration lesson. The answers to these questions are deter- mined in part by the quality of professional spirit which the supervisor has been successful in developing in the teachers under his leadership. They are also determined by the technique used in planning the lesson. No teacher likes to give a demonstration lesson which is supposed to 58 Bureau of Educational Research exemplify all the principles of good teaching, because he realizes how complicated the teaching act is and how difficult it is to show excel- lence in every phase of it. But if the lesson is planned to demonstrate a specific technique, and if it is understood that comments on it are to be restricted to a discussion of how well this technique is applied, then much of the aversion to teaching such lessons will disappear. It must be admitted, however, that frequent use of the demonstra- tion lesson does require a high degree of professional spirit in a corps of teachers. For this reason it should not be attempted too early in a supervisor's experience with a group of teachers. For this reason also it may be well for the supervisor himself to teach one or two lessons. The objections to this point of view have some weight; it is obviously an artificial situation when some other person than the regular teacher of a class uses it for demonstration purposes. But the morale effect of a lesson taught by a supervisor may well justify the practice on a limited scale. If a supervisor is willing to submit his teaching to the judgments of the teachers under his leadership, and in the following discussion is honest, self-critical, and professional in his comments on his own per- formance, the teachers under his leadership will be much more willing to follow his example and teach future demonstration lessons. Bulletins and Reports. Another means for integrating thinking and doing in group supervision consists of the development of a series of bulletins or reports which are mimeographed and distributed to all teachers. Any worth-while problem for a year's teachers' meetings will be broad enough in scope to require that it be broken down into a num- ber of subsidiary phases or problems. Each of these should receive special study from an individual teacher or a small group. At the beginning of a year's study of a problem, the group will meet as a committee of the whole; the first discussions will consist of explora tions of the problem and analysis of its several aspects. Then work on special phases of the problem may be undertaken by individuals or groups, and subsequent meetings may consist of reports of progress on one or several of these special topics. Thus the teachers' meetings con- stitute, in essence, a seminar course in education. And just as students in a seminar expect to present to the instructor at the end of the course term papers embodying the findings of their studies, so a group of teachers working under the leadership of a wise supervisor will expect to make definite reports of their work. These reports serve a double purpose. In the first place they de- mand of those who write them a crystallization of their findings and thus become a means of improving their thinking and study. In the Supervision in the Elementary Schools 59 second place, they will become part of the curricular material in the school. They will be useful to those of the staff who worked on only one of the subsidiary problems but are concerned with the results of the study of all of them. The reports will also be invaluable to new members of the staff. Such new members will want to become part of the working team of the school as soon as possible and will need to attain competence in the fields of thinking and the results of study which have already been explored by the team. An illustration of work of this sort may be furnished by the series of reports written by a group of teachers in Galesburg during the school year of 1945-1946. This group was working under the leadership of their supervisory officers in conjunction with two instructors from the University of Illinois. These instructors met with the group every two weeks. The basic problem under attack was the course of study in the language arts. Having first made a skeleton outline of the areas of study in this field in each of the grades, individuals and small groups next attacked some of the most serious problems in the language arts. As a result of their research and experimentation, reports were pro- duced on the following topics: The Values and Methodology of Choral Speech; Reading Interests, Grade by Grade, in the Schools of Gales- burg; The Use of Visual Materials in the Language Arts; Practical Methods of Remedial Reading Teaching in the Junior High School; Teaching Children to Enjoy Good Poetry; and Language Errors Made by the Children of Galesburg with Suggestions for Ways to Improve Speech Habits. These reports, when mimeographed and distributed to the teachers in Galesburg, will prove useful both in improving instruction in the lan- guage arts there and in producing a like-mindedness among the teachers of the city in their attack on problems in the field. Of course it may be argued that some teachers will not read the bulletins after they have been written and distributed. That is, no doubt, true, but there is no way automatically and inevitably to make a good, conscientious teacher out of a poor and unconscientious one. Much greater good for a total group of teachers will ensue if measures to improve instruction are aimed at the professionally minded teachers than if attempts are aimed to goad non-professionally minded teach- ers into improving their work. Moreover, the wise supervisor will adopt definite measures to secure the use of the teachers' reports in instruction. He will be engaged in a continuous effort to stimulate their use. In his supervisory conferences with individual teachers, he will refer them to pertinent sections of the 60 Bureau of Educational Research reports. At the beginning of some of the teachers' meetings he may make brief statements telling how he has seen the findings in the re- ports applied in this or that class. The subject matter of a report may be used as the basis for a demonstration lesson; for example, a report on choral speech may well be supplemented by a class demonstration of either the method or the results of such training. By such efforts as these, the supervisor will again be attacking the basic psychological problem of supervision. The reports will of neces- sity tend to be aimed to secure a change of thinking on the part of the teachers who read them; but the means adopted by the supervisor which are discussed in the previous paragraph will secure, in some measure at least, the integration of thinking and doing. Making Reports Usable. A final consideration about teachers' reports remains to be emphasized. To be sure, it is a mechanical matter, but it is nonetheless very important. Some convenient means for filing and preserving the reports in a form convenient for ready use should be furnished the teachers. Perhaps the best form is a loose-leaf binder in which the reports may be placed as they are produced. The reports may be numbered so that indexing and cross-referencing may be made easy. The latter is particularly important. As new reports are produced dealing more effectively with topics previously treated, it will be de- sirable to refer to these previous reports and show wherein the new ones supersede the material in the old. If the reports are thus made available in a binder, which, inci- dentally, should remain the property of the school, a new teacher to the school will find a large amount of assistance in them to enable him to become at once a working member of a team of like-minded profes- sional practitioners. The Effectiveness of Group Supervision in Solving the Prob- lem of the Noncooperative Teacher. Earlier in this bulletin in the section dealing with individual supervision (p. 46) the statement was made that experienced teachers should receive supervisory visits only on the teachers' invitations. It was argued that a desire for improve- ment is essential if the artistic, highly non-repetitive act of teaching is to be made more effective, and that if an individual teacher did not want supervisory visits they would give rise to resentment on his part which would make any worth-while results from the visits impossible. Let us note that in an individual, person-to-person relationship, par- ticularly between persons of different professional rank, it is easy for the person of lower rank to feel resentment. But it is not so easy to feel resentment toward an entire group of one's fellow workers. The Supervision in the Elementary Schools 61 main emphasis in this section of the bulletin devoted to group super- vision has been on the necessity for securing the spirit of a working team in the faculty group. It may be expected that all members of a given faculty may not be equally desirous of participating in the activities to secure professional progress which have been discussed above. But if the majority are so minded, then individuals can not feel the same personal resentment which they might feel toward the super- visor in individual supervision. They will tend to be caught up in the activities of the group, and participating in them will be a natural outcome. Moreover, to join with fellow teachers in group meetings and group study will not involve "loss of face" for a teacher who may have been outspoken in his comments against the supervisor or his professional methods or ideas. Some years ago there was an elementary-school faculty group which numbered among its members a teacher who was bitterly hostile in her attitude toward the supervisory officer. She voiced her hostility to her colleagues on many occasions. The supervisory officer wisely let her alone; he spent his time in supervising the activities of those teachers who wanted his help and asked for it; but he also stimulated a program of study of the curriculum in one of the elementary school fields of study. As soon as the program of group study was launched, the teachers tacitly assisted their supervisor by consciously working the hostile teacher into their activities. Before she knew what was going on, she was made head of an important committee and found herself busily engaged in a period of professional study with her colleagues. While it is true that she never did become friendly with the supervisor nor retract the criticisms she had made about him, yet she worked har- moniously with her group, and thus with him, over a period of years until he finally left the school for another position. There is no doubt that her teaching became better as a result of her committee work, and that she herself became a happier and better-adjusted person. Had the supervisor demanded the right to supervise this teacher individually, her pupils, she herself, and the morale of the school would all have suffered, and no one would have benefited. This is an illustration of a situation, common in schools, in which administrative rights should be subordinated to the preservation and fostering of human values. The five main categories of duties of a supervisor have been enu- merated and discussed briefly (see pp. 19-20). We have now con- sidered in detail the first two, namely, diagnosis of the instruction of individual teachers and leadership in improvement, and group diag- nosis of the instruction of teachers and leadership in improvement. 62 Bureau of Educational Research It will be hoped that the reader will not accept the analysis of the duties of a supervisor as an enumeration of non-overlapping functions. As a matter of fact, the professional life of a good supervisor is an integrated whole, and any division of his duties into separate categories is an artificial one, useful only in making the study of his work easier. Group Supervision and Course-of-Study-Making. As proof of the integration of a supervisor's functions, a study of the discussion of group supervision will reveal that it definitely involves course-of- study-making. A complete discussion of course-of-study-making would require many bulletins the size of this one. It would involve, among other things, a consideration of the aims and techniques of our demo- cratic American culture; of the means by which areas of subject matter should be assigned to the public schools and to different grades; of theories of learning; and of many other topics. But what has been said about the reports which may be the result of good group supervision constitutes a discussion of one part of course-of-study-making. Let us say, for example, that a group of teachers studies the improvement of the social studies program and as a result produces a series of bulletins. These bulletins may deal indi- vidually with the program of social studies in the primary grades; new ideals in geography teaching; a study of the contents of the latest textbooks in the field; the results of the studies of social ideas of elementary school children; and fictional and biographic materials in history suitable for elementary school children. There may be de- veloped a series of units of work in the social studies, consisting of narrative descriptions of the actual sequence of occurrences in ele- mentary school classrooms. All these reports are definitely curricular in character and, insofar as they represent useful ideas for teachers, are parts of the course of study in the school or schools where they were developed. Only to the extent, then, that teachers' reports growing out of group supervision are curricular materials, has course-of-study-making been discussed in this bulletin. Simple Research for Teachers. In considering the list of bul- letins developed in Galesburg, one will note that two of them represent simple research, leadership in which is stated on page 20 as the fourth function of supervision; these are the two bulletins dealing with read- ing interests and with language errors. Research in education has developed enormously in the United States in the last fifty years. Its methods have been refined and its measuring instruments improved. Hundreds of doctoral students are Supervision in the Elementary Schools 63 engaged in professional research at the present time, and research bureaus and departments in universities and large public school systems are active in swelling the volume of research studies and activities. The fact remains, unfortunately, that a large number of these studies have little practical bearing on the actual conduct of teaching and learning activities in the classroom. The many researches in the fields of content in such subjects as spelling or arithmetic have been very valuable; their results are embodied in the latest textbooks, and thus the teacher benefits from them because he has better tools for his work. Studies in reading have changed both textual materials and methods of teaching. But it is nevertheless true that "scientific study of actual teaching procedures has lagged far behind progress in the fields of content or of educational administration. Teaching method is still very largely in the realm of philosophical speculation or the application of general psychological principles. Every good teacher, however, "tries things out" in his classes and draws conclusions from the observed results, on the basis of which he modifies his methods. Such empirical and uncontrolled experimentation would not make an acceptable basis for a doctoral dissertation or even a master's thesis, but it is essential if a teacher is to learn anything from experience. Mere experience, without analysis and critical study, is either a very slothful teacher, or no teacher at all. The often-quoted re- sponse to a teacher who said he had had twenty years' experience, "No, you have had one year's experience repeated twenty times," states a truth profoundly important to the teaching profession. A good supervisor constantly stimulates experimentation, even though it may be crude and unworthy of the reward of a master's or doctor's degree. Such experimentation does offer some evidence, and to proceed on the basis of some evidence is better than to proceed on the basis of no evidence at all. The stimulation of the supervisor is exerted in two ways. First he assists the teachers to refine their methods of securing evidence. The results of tests constitute one form of evidence. It is unfortunate that when objective tests were first introduced on a large scale to school people, most of them were led to believe that at last a foolproof method of testing had been discovered. This is not the case at all. Though scoring objective tests is a merely mechanical job, making valid and reliable ones requires an extraordinary amount of skill and experience. There is not space here to discuss in detail the making of objective tests; suffice it to say that reputable books on the subject are available and a good supervisor will be familiar with them. 64 Bureau of Educational Research He will work with his teachers in refining their objective tests so that the evidence from them will be at least reasonably credible. But tests are only one form of evidence. Reference has been made to the study of children's interests in reading made in Galesburg. This study utilized a questionnaire. The questionnaire was the subject of prolonged discussion by the Galesburg group and the instructors from the University of Illinois, and it underwent many revisions. When com- pleted it was still open to question in many respects; indeed, the teach- ers who were engaged in the study indicated in their report some of the shortcomings of their work and suggested refinements of their tech- nique for future studies. But the fact remains that certain important conclusions emerged from the experiment. For example, it was obvious from the graphs of likes and dislikes in reading that there is a strong aversion on the part of Galesburg children to both poetry and biog- raphy. The report of the study pointed this out, and suggested that the teachers in the city make a determined effort to ascertain the reasons for this situation and then modify their teaching accordingly. The study of language errors required another method of accumu- lating evidence. The teachers in three schools listened carefully for such errors in the speech of their classes, and for a period of a week made a list of those which they heard. They made another list of errors in written work. Then they classified the errors in each list into com- mon groups of mistakes. On the basis of this evidence, they went to work to improve the speech and writing habits of the children. Three approaches to the solution of the problem were tried by three different teachers. The first teacher attempted to secure better speech habits by making a good-natured and semihumorous drive on errors in the school as a whole. Posters were used, jingles and rhymes about specific mistakes were made and put up in the school halls, and much attention was directed by all the teachers to the elimination of the most glaring grammatical errors. The second teacher utilized in her class- room many language games. The third stimulated the use of good language through taking her class on a series of excursions and then conducting conversations about the common experiences the children had had on their field trips. Errors in language were pointed out to those who had made them and to the whole class, but only after a child had finished what he wanted to say. Tests in language usage were given in all three groups under the different methods of attack on the problem, both before and after the remedial procedures had been used. Surprising growth was revealed in all three groups. The bulletin describing the experiment indicated that Supervision in the Elementary Schools 65 there was no conclusive evidence with reference to the best way of attacking the problem of improving children's language habits; it sug- gested more experimentation with all three methods described. Admitting all of the criticisms which could properly be made by scientific students of education on the two pieces of experimental work just described, it is nevertheless true that real value resulted from them. The teachers who participated in them grew in professional spirit and knowledge; and the other teachers of the city found in the reports many specific and helpful suggestions for the improvement of their own work. A complete description of the various kinds of simple research which may be undertaken by teachers is beyond the scope of this bul- letin. In addition to such kinds of studies as were done by the Gales- burg teachers, one might mention studies of the food and health con- ditions in the pupils' homes; of community opinion with respect to matters of importance to school instruction; of recreation facilities in a community; and of the causes of juvenile delinquency in a given community. While the findings of these simple research studies may not be of universal application or of fundamental importance, yet it is certain that the school or school system in which such studies are being system- atically pursued is one in which teachers are growing professionally; and that supervisory leadership in such activities will be productive of genuine good, not only for those who participate but also for those who are made familiar with results through mimeographed reports. The Teaching Principal as a Leader in Group Supervision. A final and very important point with reference to group supervision needs to be made. Earlier in this bulletin (p. 19) it was pointed out that in the minds and writings of many theorists in the field of super- vision the function of individual diagnosis and improvement of instruc- tion has loomed so large that people have come to accept this as either the sole, or the most important, aspect of supervision. In this same section attention was called to the fact that in Illinois as well as in many other states, there are many full-time teaching principals who, charged with the complete responsibility of instruction of a class, do not have any opportunity to visit the classrooms of other teachers. It was indicated that because of the identification of all supervision with classroom supervision, these principals feel that since they can not visit other classrooms, supervision is impossible. The erroneous character of this conclusion is obvious in the light of our discussion of group supervision. The fact that a principal is also a full-time teacher in no way precludes the possibility that he can be 66 Bureau of Educational Research a leader of the kind of team of professional workers which has been described. While some modifications will have to be made for the teaching principal in the previous discussion of group supervision — for example in the treatment of survey visits as a form of group diag- nosis — yet most of the material on group supervision may be appli- cable to all principals. Every principal, whether he teaches full time, part time, or not at all, can organize teachers' meetings, stimulate the study of professional problems by a corps of teachers, act as leader in the production of teachers' reports and bulletins, and guide simple re- search activities. Of course it will be admitted that responsibility for instruction of a class will mean that a full-time teaching principal will not have the same amount of either time or energy that he would have if he did not have to teach. In other words, he can easily find an excuse for doing no supervisory work at all. But it will probably be merely an excuse. Even a full-time teaching principal has a certain amount of prestige and re- ceives a better salary than the regular teachers. The justification of these privileges on the basis of being responsible for school reports is untenable. A good clerk could get out correct reports. Justification on the basis of contacts with parents of the children in the school is equally untenable; after all, crises with parents are not frequent. Either a full- time principal is or is not the professional leader of the teachers. If he is not, then his special prestige and extra salary are unjustifiable. What has been said above must not be considered as an argument to defend the system of full-time teaching principals. If instruction is to make the progress in American schools which it ought to make in the light of the wealth of America and her responsibility as a democ- racy for the education of her future citizens, then the time ought to come very soon when any school of four or more teachers should have a nonteaching principal. But in the meantime, during the period when taxpayers are being educated to the need of supervision, there is no excuse for a teaching principal who does not exert sound professional leadership by the means which have been discussed under the heading of group supervision. CHAPTER V THE FUTURE OF SUPERVISION As has been indicated at the beginning of this bulletin, supervision was developed in the United States largely to supply deficiencies in the preparation of teachers. The last fifty years have seen a great growth in the number of trained teachers; in the length of their train- ing; in the size and number of teacher-training institutions; and in the breadth and quality of their instruction. It must be granted that the war years have given the movement for well-trained teachers in our schools a very serious setback. In Illinois there are now several thou- sand teachers who are accredited under emergency certificates and who do not have the qualifications for a standard teaching certificate. How long this unfortunate situation will persist is problematical, but it seems likely that it will be several years before we once again have a sufficient number of trained teachers. The encouraging aspect of this situation is that everyone, both within the profession and without, recognizes that present conditions constitute an emergency. No one either wishes or expects to go back to the days of the past when a large number of teachers were either inadequately trained or not trained at all. Emergency certificates are recognized as a deviation from the normal, for on the statute books of many states are regulations requiring all teachers, elementary as well as high school, to have four years of college training to be eligible to teach. State laws also require special training in the grades or branches of study which a teacher expects to teach. The time, therefore, when all teachers will have adequate training in their fields of work does not seem to be far distant. If we accept this fact and then recall the statement that supervision was introduced into our schools to make up for inadequate teacher- training, the question naturally arises: As the training of teachers be- comes more expert and as requirements for certification are raised so that all teachers are well trained, should not supervision gradually dis- appear from American schools? There is a certain plausibility in the point of view that we should not require supervision if teachers are so well trained that they do not need it. It disappears, however, when one considers the character of teaching and of its setting in the American cultural pattern. While teaching as a calling has been in existence for at least twenty-five hundred years, yet the last fifty to seventy-five years have seen what can only be described as a revolution in the theories, ideals, and 67 68 Bureau of Educational Research methods of the profession. One may consider as the beginning of this revolution the introduction into this country of the theories of Herbart and Pestalozzi. In the last few decades of the nineteenth century, a group of young men went to Germany and studied these theories, and on their return devoted themselves to the task of remaking the schools of America on new and progressive ideals. Meantime a new psychology was being developed, starting with the work of William James, and continuing with that of such men as Hall, Thorndike, and Judd. John Dewey and his disciples introduced new philosophical concepts into the educational thinking of America. There followed, out of a new psychology and a new philosophy, a series of developments in special fields, such as in child study, measurement, the curriculum, and teaching theory. As a result of these influences, school practices and ideals which had been accepted for generations have been either discarded or greatly modified; and the world of educational technique and theory is in a state of flux comparable to that which obtains in such fields as physics and chemistry. As a result, in education as in these sciences, "Time" has indeed, "made ancient good uncouth." Considerable emphasis has already been given to the idea that teaching is not a trade but a series of creative activities. It is not a calling in which a neophyte can be thoroughly trained and then stay trained for the remainder of his professional life. If this idea is con- sidered with the statements above showing how the ideals and tech- niques of the profession have undergone revolutionary changes in the recent past and are still undergoing such changes, then the conclusion is obvious that however well trained a teacher may be at the time when he receives his diploma from a teacher-training institution, it is more than likely that the things he learned in his education courses will have been outmoded or discarded in the course of the next ten or twenty years of his professional life. Even if this is not true, his progress as a teacher and creative artist can be continued indefinitely, because per- fection in an art is never attained. In the light of the situation of the teaching profession we can point out four answers to the question with reference to the need for the continuance of supervision in the practices of creative artists in other fields. First, it is a well-known fact that virtuosos on musical instru- ments, such as the violin or piano, when they have time from their concert tours, frequently take further lessons from former teachers. Almost invariably these teachers are not as proficient as the artists they teach, but the artists recognize that other persons than themselves are capable of objective study of their performances and are therefore able Supervision in the Elementary Schools 69 to give advice and assistance in perfecting technique. The same situa- tion holds for opera and concert singers; they continue to take lessons long after they have obtained national or world reputations. Good supervisors are unanimous in stating that the better teachers are the ones who welcome supervisory help the most and who are the most hungry for suggestions and advice. They recognize the difficulty of arriving by themselves at an objective valuation of their own work. Thus supervisory leadership will always be necessary, and the better teachers are trained, the more they will need and want it. A second answer to the question of the need for the continuance of supervision will be found in the previous discussion of teachers' meetings (see pp. 50-51). It was pointed out that the teachers in a school should constitute a working team under the leadership of the supervisor-principal. The group thinking done by this team is more effective in producing progress in a changing profession than is the thinking of the individuals which compose it, for three reasons. In the first place, research has shown that when a group sets itself to solve a problem, the solution which is arrived at collectively is better than that which any individual in the group could have produced. In the second place, there is a powerful source of motivation in working in a group which is absent when its individual members work by themselves. In the third place, the teachers in a working school team can study them- selves as a group and thus learn a great deal about the dynamics and techniques of group work. They will find this study invaluable in pro- moting the same kind of techniques in their individual classes; for if group work is valuable for adults, it is even more valuable for children who are learning the ways of living in a democracy. A third answer to the question under discussion lies in what has been said concerning the way in which a good supervisor acts as a clearinghouse agency to disseminate the good ideas of the different individual teachers. Finally, the supervisor, freed from daily routine classroom duties, has time for study, research, and attendance at professional meetings. The results of such activities can be made available to the teacher through conferences, teachers' meetings, and supervisory bulletins. In the light of the above, it seems obvious that instead of diminish- ing in importance, the function of supervision should increase in prestige and value. But at this point a serious word of warning should be emphasized. Supervision can not yield the kinds of results which have been de- scribed in this bulletin unless the supervisors are qualified for the job. 70 Bureau of Educational Research It will be recognized that if the principal is to provide instructional leadership he needs a high degree of training and skill for the work. And it must be acknowledged that at present, in Illinois, principals are more frequently appointed on the basis of the theory that principals are merely head teachers than on the concept that they are the instruc- tional leaders in a school. Many school systems are still appointing principals on the basis of their long service as teachers or of their popularity in the faculty or in the community. An example of this was the recent appointment as principal of an elementary school in Illinois of a woman who has for twenty years been a first grade teacher. She has had no training in supervision, and, never having taught classes above the primary grades, is quite unfamiliar with teaching problems in the upper grades. She was appointed purely on the basis of her genial personality and her popularity among colleagues and parents. She will beyond doubt con- tinue to be popular and will be a success in her personal contacts; but unless she goes to work seriously to remedy her educational deficiencies, she will never be a true leader in instruction. Another practice common in Illinois is the appointment as ele- mentary school principal of a successful high school teacher. Fre- quently such an appointment is made on the basis that such a teacher is a man and is therefore considered able to cope with disciplinary problems. While it may be admitted without argument that such a man can learn the problems of the elementary school and can develop into a good elementary school principal, yet it must also be admitted that such development requires both experience and sustained effort. This effort many principals are not willing to exert. In the future, then, school systems should look forward to the ap- pointment of elementary school principals not only on the basis of their qualifications as persons, but also on their professional competence to be leaders of teachers. A principal should have had experience in elementary school teaching, broad training in the field of education, and special training in supervisory ideals and techniques. He should also have demonstrated his ability as a leader. Only when all school systems have accepted and put into practice these ideals in the appointment of elementary school principals can the schools make the progress which they should, and which the citizens have a right to expect. The focal point of attack in improving educa- tion in the elementary school is the elevation of standards in the office of supervisor-principal. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Barr, A. S., Burton, W. H., and Brueckner, L. ]., Supervision. D. Appleton Century, 1938. 938 pp. Hillegas, Milo B., The Elements of Classroom Supervision. Laidlaw, 1931. 224 pp. Jacobson, P. J., and Reavis, W. C, Duties of School Principals. Prentice Hall, 1941. 812 pp. Kyte, George C, The Principal at Work. Ginn. 1941. 495 pp. Reeder, Edwin H., Simplifying Teaching. Laidlaw, 1930. 192 pp. 71