The Head of Faculties Approaches and Process of Supervision in Al Ain Cycle One Schools.
Abstract
The Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) was established in (2005) to manage and develop education in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. A few years later, ADEC implemented the new school model (NSM); a school system that aims to achieve the educational goals of the emirate. One of the important initiatives of ADEC in the New School Model was the establishment of a new management and leadership lines such as the creation of the Head of Faculty (HoFs) position. The role of the HoFs is supervising the implementation of the NSM’s teaching and learning process through providing advice, coaching, and supervision to teachers. This study focuses on supervision approaches used by the HoFs and the steps they carry out their supervision in cycle one schools in Al Ain city. The study aims to understand what approaches utilized by the HoFs when working with teachers and whether the HoFs carry out their supervision according to standardized steps. Three hundred teachers out of (993) and (63) HoFs out of (82) from Al Ain cycle one schools participated in this study. The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods in the form of questionnaire and one to one interviews. Each of the two groups answered a survey which consisted of (38) questions; (32) of these questions covered the four approaches of educational supervision as developed by Carl Glickman; directive-control; directive-informational; collaborative; and non-directive approach. The results of this section in the questionnaire show that the HoFs most often used collaborative approach with the teachers. However, the teachers perceive that the HoFs’ used the non-directive approach with them. The results show that directive-control approach is the least used approach in the NSM schools. Importantly, developmental supervision, which is based on implementing more than one approach of supervision based on the teachers’ different levels, exists in cycle one schools to some extent. The last six questions of the questionnaire investigated the practice of clinical supervision. The results show that the teachers and HoFs think that clinical supervision is used, but many of the steps are not properly being followed. For instance, the preconference, the collection and analysis of data, and critiquing (the last step) were not clear to the participants and therefore this procedure was not implemented accurately by the HoFs. The study ends with recommendations for practice and further research on the issue of educational supervision in the UAE