The Role of Principal Supervisors in Developing Principals as Instructional Leaders

• In Event: The Role of Principal Professional Development and Evaluation in Promoting Effective School Leadership Practices

Abstract

Objective
The shift from operations management to instructional leadership has significantly changed role expectations for principals in the last two decades (Neumerski, 2013). To help develop principals as instructional leaders, recent philanthropic initiatives and a national set of principal supervisor standards published by the Council of Chief State School Officers (2015), have focused attention on changing principal supervisors’ work from compliance and monitoring to principal support and development. Principal supervisors, however, have been slow to adjust to the changing needs of principals (Honig, 2008).

There is limited research on how principal supervisors provide principal support, development and evaluation. This paper examines the complexities and tensions that underlie the role transformation of principal supervisors to understand how they effectively promote principal instructional leadership development.

Perspective
We explore the shift in systems of principal supervision and support in a mid-sized Southern district over multiple school years, including a dramatic reduction in the ratio of principals to supervisors, aimed at enabling supervisors to spend more time supporting each principal. The paper first describes how principal supervision practices support, coach and develop principals. Next, we ask, to what extent, and in what ways is principal supervisors’ support of principals, including frequency of contact, focus of visits, and specific supervisory practices, associated with principals’ assessments of supervisors’ effectiveness?

Data Sources and Methods
We draw on data from unique matched surveys administered to principals, principal supervisors, and central office administrators who oversaw principal supervisors in fall 2016 and spring 2017. The principal response rate was 90% (N = 123), and 100% of supervisors (N = 13) responded. Surveys asked questions related to supervisors’ frequency and focus of visits to schools, practices for principal support and development, and perceptions of supervisors’ effectiveness.

We descriptively contrast supervisor and principal reports of frequency, focus, and disposition toward supervisors’ practices. We employed OLS regression models to explore how supervisor time use, focus of visits, and practices relate to principals’ perceptions of their effectiveness on areas ranging from overall supportive attitude to providing specific feedback on classroom instruction.

Results
Results show wide variation within and across supervisors in the level of support principals received and how supervisors perceived their effectiveness in specific areas. Supervisors reported an average of 12 visits to their most-visited schools within a three-month period while visiting least-visited schools an average of 4 times. Principal reports of time spent working on instructional leadership also varied by supervisor, ranging from 30% to 79% of time spent together. Overall, principals most often agreed that their supervisors were effective in areas related to trust building, encouragement, and advocacy, and were least likely to consider their supervisors effective in classroom instruction and assessment.

Significance
The findings suggest that supervisors are embracing instructional-leadership development in their practices and focus with principals, but this requires further enhancement despite a reduction in span of control. The paper discusses challenges for the redesign of the principal supervisor role as coach and principal developer, and implications for district policies to support this changing role.

Authors

• Laura K. Rogers, Vanderbilt University

• Ellen B. Goldring, Vanderbilt University

• Jason A. Grissom, Vanderbilt University