The Principal: Building the Future Based on the Past

• In Event: Intents, Enactors, and Outcomes of Educational Supervision

Abstract

This chapter was written from the perspective that history is more than storytelling or stringing together facts. An interpretative approach was used to discuss principal supervision’s past, present, and future roles across policy contexts. Principals’ teacher supervisory practices are viewed by the author as the most important element of improving classroom instruction and, consequently, student achievement. Practices, however, change in response to policy, politics, and research. Supervision as we know it today has been influenced by the past, is shaped by the present, and will contribute to new knowledge in the future.

Author

• Mary Lynne Derrington, The University of Tennessee