The best way for teachers to increase student enrolment and retention is to not to offer a product better but to offer a better product. A program of teacher supervision and evaluation could achieve this goal while respecting the fiscal limitations of AE.
MAELM 580, November 2013
Improved Supervision Through Coaching
Adult Education (AE) at the Vancouver Board of Education (VBE) serves approximately 2000 students at six centres. Funding for AE students is lower than for K-12 students, so AE schools have grown on shoe-string budgets. Professional development is limited to two organized days per year and one optional self-directed day. Teaching assignments and working hours are insecure, and can be changed in whole or part every nine weeks. Supervision and evaluation are rare. These working conditions limit collaborative engagement in long term planning, deteriorate dedication to the employer, and foster a culture of independent teaching practices. Despite these challenges, faculty consistently exhibits commitment to student success.
Years of successive funding reductions mean that the VBE AE system is faltering. Last year one third of the teaching staff were laid off. Post-secondary schools are adding new pressure on AE as they increase high school level course offerings. VBE AE teachers have regular and intense strategy sessions about how to maintain minimum enrollment levels, but teacher efforts at publicity are amateur and distract teachers from improving instructional practices. The best way for teachers to increase student enrollment and retention is to not to offer a product better but too offer a better product. A program of teacher supervision and evaluation could achieve this goal while respecting the fiscal limitations of AE.
The VBE AE culture distinguishes itself as un-bureaucratic. Teachers are permitted great leeway and take great professional pride in teaching to the student instead of to the curriculum. While this approach to accountability offers personalized benefits to students, it means that AE teachers resist regulated action. The constructivist learning options that supervision can offer may mitigate teacher objections to interference in the established culture of professional autonomy.
Autocratic evaluation often fails to yield instructional improvement because there is no single best way to teach. Bureaucracy may be conveniently accountable, but it does not provide the qualitative data required for the reflective practices that improve competence. Democratic supervision, typified by cooperative action to improve teaching, can provide qualitative feedback that supports reflection that leads to improved practice and respects the autonomy so valued by AE instructors. Because a democratic approach intends to improve practice through cooperation (Sullivan & Glanz, 2013, p. 14) it works well in a constructivist learning community and appeals to needs and preferences of adult learners looking to internalize and reshape knowledge (Zepeda, p.95).
Perhaps in response to its failure to respond to real learning needs of teachers and students, evaluation in AE has been bureaucratic and only happens under duress as when a teacher is exhibiting prolonged incompetence. AE teachers need opportunity to reconstruct supervisory roles so they do not interfere with current practices or potentially jeopardize employability. Acknowledging the historical roles of special and general supervisors (Sullivan & Glanz, 2013, p.11) could help teachers see that supervisory roles can be interpreted. This example shows that reducing the emphasis on bureaucratic summative evaluation and increasing emphasis on democratic pre-assessment and formative evaluation can create supervisory and evaluative processes that are well received by teachers because they improve instruction and respect autonomy.
Supervision and evaluation in AE have been uncommon and often unpleasant. This means that neither teachers nor administrators are well practiced in these activities. If evaluation is used as an improvement measure designed to encourage meaningful reflection that leads to improved professional practices, the current fixed mindset (Dweck, 2008, p.6-7) associated with the established concepts of teacher evaluation can be overcome. In its place a growth mindset that fosters continual improvement (p.6-7) and supports constructivist learning could be encouraged. I believe this shift could happen more readily if AE were to approach evaluation through a coaching model.
Coaching is “a tangible expression of a leader’s commitment to employees (Zenger, 2010, p.8)”. The administration’s commitment to instructional improvement is an essential requirement for change in this system that has developed under working conditions that do not support teachers in their professional development. Coaching can also address the problems of student enrollment and retention because it can “drive greater levels of engagement and commitment, which in turn leads to satisfied customers and productivity (p.8).” Fortunately, the dearth of teacher evaluations in AE makes a switch from supervision to coaching largely semantic. The true challenge of change would come from implementing a learning community where previously there has been none.
Because a system of instructional support will not be replacing an existing system, it is crucial to garner support from instructors because the new system will be rightly perceived as additional unpaid work for an employer that only minimally supports its workers. To overcome issues of trust, administration must acknowledge teacher insight by making them equal partners in the supervisory process. By employing the tenets of constructivist learning (O’Neil in Zepeda, 2000, p.100) the employer can promote greater ownership and participation in learning that is job-embedded. Interest can be garnered by acknowledging that “no one supervision strategy can adequately address all needs exhibited by all teachers” (Zepeda, p. 100), thus allowing teachers to engage in setting learning outcomes for supervision that serve their needs and interests. These activities can lead to the open dialogue that is emblematic of constructivist learning communities and encouraged through coaching. They will also appeal to and support improvement in the AE teaching community.
References
Dweck,C. S. (2006) Mindset. New York: Ballantine.
Marshall, K. (2005). It’s time to rethink teacher supervision and evaluation. Phi Delta
Kappan, 86(10), 727-735.
Sullivan, S, & Glanz, J. (2013). Supervision that improves teaching and learning:
Strategies and techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Zenger, J.H. and Stinnett, K. (2010) The Extraordinary Coach. New York: McGraw-Hill
Zepeda, S.J. (2000). Supervisory practices: Building a constructivist learning community
for adults. In J. Glanz, & L. Behar-Horensein (Eds.), Paradigm debates in
curriculum & supervision: Modern & postmodern perspectives (pp.93-
107).Westport,CT: Greenwood Press.