A proposed profile of the roles, functions, and contextual factors of the instructional supervisor as perceived by teachers, instructional supervisors, and principals in private schools -

Abstract

Instructional supervision is widely recognized as a critical component of school governance (Sergiovanni and Starratt, 2002; Zepeda and Kruskamp, 2007). By nature of their job, the instructional supervisor occupies a key role within a school where she “is the liaison between programs and between people” (Lipscomb, 1997, p.1). Supervision has various definitions, and each context might have a different definition and functions for the instructional supervisor. Researchers and practitioners still face the challenge of determining the specific functions of this role and of locating it on the school organizational chart. This steered researchers towards defining the role of the instructional supervisor by first defining its functions. Further, there are many factors that either hinder (Kruskamp, 2003; Zepeda and Kruskamp, 2007; Martin, 1997, Gentry, 2002) or enhance (Kramer, 2007) the effectiveness of the role of the instructional supervisor. Various studies in international literature explored the role of the instructional supervisor from the perspectives of those directly linked to this position; the teachers, instructional supervisors and the principals. However, very few considered the concomitant perspectives of all three in addition to the contextual factors (facilitators and obstacles) impacting that role. Moreover, the research in the Lebanese context pertaining to educational supervision is scarce and has a different focus. This study explores the role and functions of the instructional supervisor as perceived by teachers, instructional supervisors, and principals in private Lebanese schools. Its purpose is two folds: (1) Build a proposed profile of the Lebanese instructional supervisor grounded in the three sets of perspectives as well as in the documented theoretical and empirical literature on effective supervision. (2) Identify the factors that enhance or hinder the achievement of this profile. This study followed the qualitative research paradigm and in specific it used a multiple-case design.