Supervisory Leadership Practices as Perceived by Supervisors and Teachers in Saudi Arabia - Research Proposal Example

An Invеstigаtiоn intо thе Рurроsе оf Suреrvisоry Lеаdеrshiр Рrасtiсеs аs Реrсеivеd by Suреrvisоrs аnd Tеасhеrs in Sаudi Аrаbiа Introduction The quality of supervision that is given to teachers ultimately has a bearing on the quality of management of any learning institution. For supervision to be effective, its purpose must be in line with the objectives that the learning institution aims to attain. In addition, the supervision process must take into consideration the perception that the supervisors and those being supervised have towards the process. That is, both teachers and supervisors must be well informed of the role that the supervision process aims to achieve in order to make the process effective and useful. It is against this background that the proposed study aims to evaluate what tеасhеrs and suреrvisоrs in Sаudi Аrаbiа perceive of the role purpose of suреrvisоry lеаdеrshiр рrасtiсеs that are implemented in regard to teaching processes in the country. Purpose of the study The main aim of the study is to explore the progression of teachers and supervisors perceptions of the actual and preferred supervisory practices in Saudi Arabia. Other objectives of the study are: To evaluate the purpose of the supervisory role in the educational setting. To assess how supervisors perceive their role at various stages of their career progression To evaluate how supervisors apply their role into practice taking into consideration the following aspects: 1. Instructional leadership 2. evaluation and conferencing 3. Communication and relationship 4. Staff and personal development. To in investigate how do teachers perceive the role of a supervisor. To assess to what extent do teachers consider the supervisory leadership as a supportive mechanism. Personal experience as a supervisor, which has initiated the idea for this research I have worked as a teacher at various stages of education: primary, secondary and high school. In 2000, I was promoted to a supervisory position. My experience as both a teacher and a supervisor enabled me to gain a special opportunity as part of my career progression to experience the new role and evaluate the role from both perspectives. This has helped me gain a better understanding of the supervisory role and identify any weaknesses in supervisory leadership. As a supervisor, I have been able to put into practice some of the activities that supervisors undertake. According to the Supervisor’s Guidebook, these activities can be categorised based on five dimensions of supervision as (1) instructional leadership and development, (2) staff and personal development, (3) communication and relationship, (4) classroom visiting and evaluation, and (5) curriculum development (Ministry of Education (Saudi Arabia), 1998). At the beginning, I made some mistakes in my new role as supervisor since I tended to be inflexible in some situations. However, later on I realised that a good relationship is nurtured between supervisors and teachers when there is mutual understanding and consideration for each other’s needs. By visiting classrooms, and conducting evaluations and providing prompt feedback on areas that needed improvement while reinforcing areas that were good, I was able to develop good working relationships with teachers. This helped in promoting staff and personal development. I have also played in developing the learning curriculum for schools. I have learnt that many supervisors initially start their careers as teachers before taking on the role of supervisors. Some teachers move directly into administrative jobs after taking professional administrative courses while others get promoted from being teachers to take the roles of assistant school principal or assistant head teacher then to head teachers or principals. Supervisors therefore perceive their role as a career that complements the teaching profession since their role is to oversee the activities of teachers. Supervisors also have the view that the more positive changes they bring to the educational setting, the more they are likely to achieve and hence advance their career progression. Teacher supervisors use a wide range of supervisory approaches in their roles. They observe teachers and give them feedback through their direct communication with them and through post-observation conferences (Rehman & Al-Bargi 2014). Supervisors also take the role of teacher development through aspects such as clinical supervision, whereby they are involved with teachers in a close “helping, relationship” that is aimed at uplifting the teachers’ professional practice (Okaforn.d., p. 1). Through this, supervision can be seen as a general function that manages and coordinates all activities that are concerned with learning. From my observation, teachers perceive the role of a supervisor in different ways. There are those who perceive it as helpful; others think it is intimidating depending on the nature of the supervisors; and others are ignorant of its significance. This view is supported in literature where it is indicated that many teachers dread supervision because it is associated with the supervisor providing negative feedback (Rehman & Al-Bargi 2014); some teachers support the notion of feedback but rarely welcome its implementation (Rehman & Al-Bargi 2014); and some veteran teachers are rarely evaluated and thus do not seem to bother about supervision (Marshall 2005). Further, while many teachers would ordinarily support the supervisory leadership as a supportive mechanism, the reality is that many teachers still view supervision as a kind of inspection (Ghavifekr & Ibrahim 2014). This is because many teachers are yet to distinguish between supervisory leadership and inspection. Background to the study Educational supervision is defined as “an artistic, democratic, humanistic, and inclusive leadership process, which aims to evaluate and improve the educational process from all its aspects” (Ministry of Education (Saudi Arabia) 1998, p. 35). According to the Ministry of Education (1998), educational supervision in Saudi Arabia has evolved through three key phases: inspection, direction and supervision. Between 1925 and 1968, there was inspection, in which the supervisor checked the teacher’s implementation of the rules and regulations stipulated by the Ministry of Education. This was followed by direction between 1968 and 1997. Direction was more organised and technical and was conducted by leaders who had wide educational knowledge. It was designed to assist teachers and to permit them to utilise opportunities for cultural, professional and behavioural development. From 1997 to date, supervision in Saudi Arabia has evolved into instructional supervision. This is defined as “a technical process performed by specialist educators with the intention of improving education processes by previewing teachers’ activities within the available means and potentialities as well as helping them to improve their performance in order to interact more effectively with their students” Ministry of Education (Saudi Arabia) 1999, p. 523). It has been argued that over the years, the supervisor’s role has changed from being largely evaluative and judgmental to being more developmental in focus (Kayaoglu 2012, p. 103). In spite of this, there are many cases where teachers still fear supervision since they regard it as a form of inspection or judgement (Rehman & Al-Bargi 2014, p. 1558) while others think that the current supervision does have a professional value and does not have a positive influence on their performance (Kayaoglu 2012, p. 103). Such attitudes mean that there is need to re-evaluate the рurроsе оf suреrvisоry lеаdеrshiр рrасtiсеs in Saudi Arabia by looking at the issue from the perspective of teachers and supervisors. The proposed study is informed by the need to fill gaps that have been identified by a number of authors who have done works related to teacher supervision. One such point is that when implementing supervision of learning and teaching in Saudi Arabia, it is “essential to take the teachers’ and supervisors’ perceptions of supervisory practices into account” (Abdulkareem 2001, p. 3). The implication of Abdulkareem’s statement is that many suреrvisоry lеаdеrshiр рrасtiсеs have not considered what teachers and supervisors think about supervision. Therefore, most of the current supervision is conducted regardless of whether teachers like it or not and without consideration of whether supervisors are doing the right thing or not in their supervisory roles. Specifically, Abdulkareem (2001) argued that there is need to investigate whether the perceptions of supervisors and teachers are varied in regard to the practices of instructional supervision that were being implemented at the time of the study. It has also been argued that supervisory practice in Saudi Arabia is “rooted more in traditional and personal preferences than in a body of research or knowledge” (Alabdulkareem 2014, p. 87). Further, Alabdulkareem (2014) has argued that supervisors in schools in Saudi Arabia do not follow a defined approach in supervision and do not have lucid and well-articulated goals. The proposed study will thus seek to highlight some of these issues by investigating teachers’ and supervisors’ attitudes towards supervision in schools in Saudi Arabia. Although Abdulkareem (2011) conducted another study along the same area, this study was focused on instructional supervision in public secondary schools in Saudi Arabia. The proposed study is therefore unique in that it will focus on primary schools in Saudi Arabia. Methodology Pleases revise it with methodology in the(Note) file (The note file was not provided at the start. This is new information and should be considered separately). Please note that I used the methodology information that you had provided. Since the research aims to study various issues and subjects in a local setting, the best strategy is to adopt a methodology that uses various study approaches whose findings can be evaluated with respect to local applicability. The nature of the research thus lends itself to action research. Action research can be defined as a process in which people collaborate to solve a problem (Matthews & Kostelis, 2011). It is the type of research that is usually applied in educational settings (Matthews & Kostelis, 2011, p. 143). The action research paradigm is appropriate for a research when: (1) the researcher wants to study what is going on in his or her profession; (2) the researcher is empowered to change future action based on the findings of the research; and (3) it is possible to make improvements (Matthews & Kostelis, 2011). Based on these characteristics, action research emerges as the best paradigm to be used in the proposed study. In this paradigm, the research process is conducted on a step-by-step basis and is constantly monitored over a period of time using various mechanisms such as diaries, questionnaires, interviews, case studies, observations and so forth (Cohen & Manion 1994, cited by Koshy 2010). The advantage of such an approach is that the data collected using various mechanisms can be compared to come up with concrete findings about the problem being studied. These methods will also allow the researcher to be actively involved in the research and hence gain a deeper understanding of the issues being investigated. Through action research, the researcher, being a supervisor, will be better able to uncover issues that have previously been unknown in relation to the рurроsе оf suреrvisоry lеаdеrshiр рrасtiсеs through activities such as conducting interviews, observation, making journal entries of activities and so on. Using action research methodology is also associated with various challenges. To start with, undertaking action research takes a lot of time due to the various methods to be used. Action research also seems to focus on data collection and evaluation instead of data analysis (McGrath & Coles 2013), which gives less meaning to the findings. These shortcomings will be overcome by using various data collections methods concurrently and including as many participants as possible in the research to enhance the reliability of the findings. Data collection methods to be used As outlined above, the research will use an action research paradigm. This means that various types of data collection methods will be used in the proposed research. These include interviews, video observations, journals, open-ended questionnaires and directive reports. Research participants will be supervisors and primary school teachers, both male and female, from schools that will be identified in Asir, Saudi Arabia. Interviews will enable the researcher to interact directly with the research participants (both teachers and supervisors) and hence be in a position to gather more information from the participants by seeking clarification to issues that are not clear during the research process (Klenke 2008). However, the researcher will need to be keen to ensure that no issues that are pertinent to the research are left out during the interview. Video observations will be made possible by recordings involving five male supervisors. Journals entries and open ended questionnaires will be used for to collect data from 20 teachers (10 males and 10 females). Open-ended questionnaires are called qualitative questionnaires and are mostly used for exploratory research, for instance when the researcher intends to know how participants feel or think or experience a given phenomenon (Johnson & Christensen 2012) as the case is in the proposed research. The journals entries and open-ended questionnaires will be used for teachers in four primary schools that will be identified in Asir. Directive reports will also be used as additional sources of information for the research. Data collected using all these methods will be collated and interpreted to obtain meaning. Ethical considerations Ethical considerations will be made throughout the research process. Prior to conducting any research, consent will be sought from the target participants and the relevant authorities so that they are aware of the purpose of the research and its findings, which is basically academic. Care will also be taken regarding the use of various methods of data collection. For instance, it will not be possible to obtain video recordings of female supervisors; therefore, the researcher will have to rely on interviews and making journal entries to gather information to fill this gap. More importantly no participant will be coerced to participate in the research – the researcher will ensure that all participants take part in the research voluntarily and on an informed consent basis. References Abdulkareem, R 2001, Supervisory practices as perceived by teachers and supervisors in Riyadh schools, Saudi Arabia, unpublished PhD thesis, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. Alabdulkareem, R 2014, ‘Differentiated supervision model: a way of improving school leadership in Saudi Arabia’, US-China Education Review, vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 186-192. Alkrdem, M 2011, School-based instructional supervision in Saudi Arabian public secondary schools, unpublished PhD thesis, The University of York, York. Ghavifekr, S & Ibrahim, MS 2014, ‘Head of departments’ instructional supervisory role and teachers’ job performance: teachers’ perceptions’, Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Management Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 45-56. Johnson, B & Christensen, L 2012, Educational research: quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches, SAGE Publications, Inc., London. Kayaoglu, MN 2012, ‘Dictating or facilitating: the supervisory process for language teachers’, Australian Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 37, no. 10, pp. 103-117. Klenke, K 2008, Qualitative research in the study of leadership, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley. Koshy, V 2010, Action research for improving educational practice: a step-by-step guide, 2ndedn, SAGE Publications Ltd, London. Matthews, TD &Kostelis, KT 2011, Designing and conducting research in health and human performance, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. McGrath, J & Coles A 2013, Your education research project companion, 2nd edn, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon. Ministry of Education (Saudi Arabia) 1998, The supervisor’s guidebook, Ministry of Education, Riyadh. Ministry of Education (Saudi Arabia) 1999, The encyclopedia of the educational history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Education, Riyadh. Okafor, P n.d., ‘Leadership in instructional supervision’, viewed 11 February 2014, . Oliva, PF 1998, ‘Supervision and curriculum development’, in GR Firth & EF Pajak (eds.), Handbook of research on school supervision, Macmillan, New York. Rehman, AA & Al-Bargi, A 2014, ‘Teachers’ perspectives on post observation conferences: a study at a Saudi Arabian University’, Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 4, no. 8, pp. 1558-1568. Rumsey, MG 2013, ‘The exclusive science of leadership’, in MG Rumsey, The Oxford handbook of leadership, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 455-466. Read More