Supervision as Administration: The Control Structure of the School

This report focuses on some key varieties of decisions governing instructional affairs in public elementary schools. Twenty-nine elementary schools, 16 of which utilized team teaching and 13 of which employed conventional instruction, composed the sample in this study. The control structure interview was used as one of the key data collection methods. The findings indicate that more than half of the instructional decisions were made by individual classroom teachers. In the schools utilizing team teaching, a substantial proportion of decisions were made by the teacher work group. In the schools without teams, a substantial number of instructional decisions were made by persons outside the school. It was found that elementary principals rarely collaborated with individual teachers in deciding on instructional activities. Instead, principals participated more frequently with other nonteachers and teacher groups and made unilateral decisions. Supervision of instruction by administrators seems, for all practical purposes, to be minimal. These findings challenge current concepts of school supervision. (Author/DS)