Professional Development Activity 12-A
Submitted by James F. Nolan Jr., Penn State University
(Comment option available at the bottom of the page.)

This activity relates to Standard 12.2. 

This activity presents you with a real-life scenario and asks you to develop a plan for data collection to evaluate the impact of a specific instructional supervision program.

 

The school district in which you are hoping to become a building principal has recently decided to move from a traditional teacher evaluation system to a differentiated supervision process designed to enhance teacher growth. As part of the process of moving to differentiated supervision, the district decided that it would be useful to prepare a pilot group of teachers and administrators to engage in the process of clinical supervision (as defined by Cogan and Goldhammer). A group of 10 administrators volunteered to participate in the pilot program. There are three elementary principals, two middle-school principals, two high-school principals and one vocational education director. Each of these administrators will be supervising two teachers in their building using clinical supervision. In addition, the assistant superintendent and superintendent will each supervise one teacher at the elementary level. The 18 teachers who will be supervised will participate with the administrators in a five-day training program in clinical supervision next October. Each administrator and teacher dyad has agreed to complete five or six clinical supervision cycles during the remainder of the school year. The intent of the pilot is to prepare the principals to do clinical supervision on a larger scale and to prepare the teachers to eventually become peer coaches.

 

The district supervision and evaluation committee responsible for planning, implementing, and evaluating the move to differentiated supervision has recognized the need to evaluate this pilot program. The committee has identified the following evaluation questions as most pertinent: To what degree do the participants posses the knowledge and skills necessary to engage in the process of clinical supervision? Are administrators able to abandon the role of traditional evaluator and engage in a collaborative supervision process? Does the clinical supervision process result in changes in teacher thinking and/or behavior? What factors or variables inhibit or facilitate the implementation of clinical supervision?

 

Your task is to develop a plan for collecting evaluation data during the upcoming school year to address the evaluation questions developed by the supervision and evaluation committee. Your plan should include types of data to be collected; data sources (i.e., from whom the data will be collected); and a timeline for data collection. Finally, you should write a two to three page rationale justifying the data collection plan you have developed.

 

Assessment Criteria

 

Each of the four evaluation questions is addressed through multiple data collection strategies. Each of the data collection strategies included in the plan is germane to the evaluation question being addressed.

 

Data collection strategies include plans for collecting data from the participants as a whole as well as from each of the important subgroups (i.e., teachers, principals, central office administrators; elementary, middle- and high-school levels).

 

The timeline for the data collection plan is reasonable. The rationale for the data collection plan points out the congruence between the evaluation questions and data collection strategies.

 

The rationale for the data collection plan draws on accepted standards of program evaluation.

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