Supervision as Moral Action

Ronald M. Suplido Jr.

 ABSTRACT
• Students' decisions are
influenced by the moral climate
of their school. Changingsocial,
economical, and traditional
family structures have
contributed to an upheaval of
moral foundations. As a result,
schools are becoming a critical
arena for students to develop
into morally responsible adults.
 ABSTRACT
• Consequently, the moral
growth of teachers is an
important concern, as the
levels of their cognitive,
conceptual, and ego
development have a direct
relationship with student
behavior and performance.
 ABSTRACT
• Supervisors play an important
role in promoting thegrowth of
adults in the school.Those
supervisors who do not
manipulate teachers, who accept
responsibility for their mistakes,
and who display authenticity and
candor are the most successfulat
generating trust amongtheir
staff. This trust is essentialwhen
defining the moral dimensionsof
the supervisional relationships
between faculty andstaff--
relationships that are aconcern
for the moral development of the
entire school community.
INTRODUCTION
 Understanding Social System
• A social system is a complex set of human
relationships interacting in manyways.

• Within a single organization, the social system

includes all the people in it and their
relationships to one another and to the outside
world.
 Why Complex?

• Behavior of one affects the behaviorof

others.

• It is an open system.
 SOCIALEQUILIBRIUM
• A system is said to be in social equilibrium when its interdependent
parts are in dynamic working balance.
• Equilibrium is a dynamic concept, not a static one. Despite constant
change and movement in every organization, the system’s working
balance can still be retained.
Social Equilibrium/ Disequilibrium
Equilibrium Disequilibrium

When the
When there is a interdependent parts of
dynamic working
a system are working
balance among its
interdependent parts. against each other
 Psychological and Economic Contract
• ECONOMIC CONTRACT-where time, talent, energy are exchanged for
wages, hours and reasonable working conditions

• PSYCHOLOGICALCONTRACT– The condition of each employee’s

psychological involvement – both contributions and expectations –
with the socialsystem.
ACTION VERSUS
BEHAVIOR
 BEHAVIOR
• BEHAVIOR is a term used to denote human
action seen on the surface. It assumes that it is
an activity brought about by somestimulus.
• It does not imply free choice, value seeking, or
altruism. Neither does it explicitly deny them.
• It considers merely what is observable,
measurable and quantifiable; what fits into an
observable pattern of relationships between
what preceded and what followed.
SUPERVISORYBEHAVIOR refers to actions by supervisors that have
been associated with positive or negative reactions on the part of
teachers or administrators or political authorities, etc.

It canbe:
 “friendly”
 “positive reinforcement”
 “non-directive”
 “authoritarian”
 “democratic”
Studies on supervision as moral action is severely limited.

The studies are framed from the perspective of “effectiveness”. That is

to say, they look first to what the goals of the organization are. Then
they look for those behaviors that bring about those goals and
objectives most effectively, that is at the lowest cost in terms of money,
personnel, time and other resources.

“Organizational effectiveness” employs technological rationality,

functional rationality and linear logic. Efficiency is the highest value,not
loyalty, harmony, honor, beauty and truth.
SUPERVISION AS MORAL
ACTION
• Literatures on “supervisory behavior” tends to bedominated
by efficiency, functional and reductionist assumptions. The
point of highlighting the limitations of these perspectives on
supervision is not to deny their usefulness but to indicate
the need to balance those perspectives with an appreciation
of the rich human qualities of the social context being
studied.
• Moral action implies some level of
initiation, or personal choosing, or a
person willing to engage others fora
purpose beyond “need fulfillment”.

• Moral action implies self-fulfillment, but

not in some narcissistic concentration or
isolated self-gratification. Rather, it is
fulfillment of the self through involvement
with the authentic participation in a
community’s struggle to become more
humane, more just, more compassionate,
more loving and yes, more productive, in
the sense of making the world a healthier,
safer place where the goods of the earth
are shared more fairly than they are
presently.
• Our view of morality sees moral action as taking place in a context of limits
– limits of understanding, limits of maturity, limits of virtue and limits of
power. In a sense , morality is always something to be negotiated, it is
always soothing and only partially achieved. The values we seek are always,
in a sense, beyond us. Our actions become moral only as we reach out for
what lies beyond those limits and the definition of human possibility.
• Supervision as moral action, therefore can be understood as an effort on
the part of supervisors to participate in a community of other moral
agents, each of which is struggling to do “the right thing,” according to
some sense of values. Supervisors can help foster that sense of a moral
environment which encourages those in the community to go beyond
considerations of efficiency toinclude other values such as self-fulfillment,
community, integrity, and compassion.
• Supervision as moral action is not a reaction to stimulus. It involves
choosing and taking action, seeking for values, and an intentional
promotion of a principle. As such, it is dynamic, notreactionary, enriching
the environment rather than satisfying some need from the environment.
THE UNDERSIDE OF
SUPERVISION
 underside (noun)
:a side usually hidden from sight;
specifically: the more unpleasantor
reprehensible side
• First and foremost, the values thatguide supervisory action should clearly
be moral values; that is, they should deal with the very strong basis for
integral human relationships and for the preservation of social
organizations as places that hold human beings, and the good of these
human beings, assacred.

• These values transcend concerns with efficiency, which can easily leadto
using human beings as merely the means to some larger purpose of
productivity, (e.g., quantitative organizational growth, increase of grade
scores). These values require that all activities in an organization,
including supervision, promote the human good of people within it.
• Too often, supervision is exercised as an organizational ritual to
maintain compliance with some political or legal necessity.
Underlying the professional surface are the elements of human
nature which can undermine the potential effectiveness of the
supervisory process. Questions regarding motives and attitudes,
concerns regarding power, the desire to dominate or control the
interaction, issues of credibility, feelings of insecurity, racial,
ethnic, sexual and age stereotypes and the developmental level of
the participants all affect the supervisor'sactivity.
• When these underside issues dominate the supervisory episode,
they can block any possibility of open, trusting, professional
communication. Mistrust, manipulation, aggressive and controlling
actions or language on the part of the supervisor, or teacher, or
both, can result. In those instances. supervision cannot be moral
action. In fact, in those instances it is immoral: hypocritical,
dishonest, disloyal, vicious, dehumanizing. Further, it is immoral
because there can be no growth for either participant and it
becomes a waste of valuable time.
THE MORAL HEURISTICS OF
SUPERVISORY PRACTICE
 heuristic (adjective)
: using experience to learn
and improve

:Involving or serving as an
aid to learning, discovery,or
problem-solving by
experimental and especially
trial-and-error methods
• The task of the supervisor in a clinical setting is action-oriented. It is
the task of the teacher and supervisor to seek useful knowledge and
increased understanding which will support action.
• Since situations of practice are characterized by unique events,
uniform answer to problems are not likely to be useful. Problem-
solving must be situation specific. If a supervisory exchange is to be
moral, it must respect the moral integrity of the supervisor and the
supervised. In addition to improved instructional practice, and more
effective pedagogy, the supervisory practice described above
concerns the role of supervisors in facilitating the growth of their staff
through the levels of need and stages of moral development in order
to create a school climate of prosocial decision making and
responsible, moral action.
• For this to occur, supervisors will need to explore those conditions
necessary to initiate and maintain trust, honesty and open
communication.
• The supervisor and the supervisee must meet to establish expectations,
goals and ground rules of the supervisory interaction, and evaluate them
on an ongoing basis. These discussions will ascertain what procedureswill
be followed, what rights and responsibilities will be involved, who
controls which aspects of the process, whose needs are being served, the
purpose of the exchange,etc.
• This negotiation of guidelines is in itself a moral action because it
establishes a framework for fairness and honesty. Studies on trust have
shown that supervisors who display a willingness toaccept responsibility
for their mistakes, who do not manipulate teachers and who display
candor and authenticity, are more successful at generating trust among
staff.
 TRANSACTIONAL
SUPERVISORY ACTION
 Transactional Leadership
• Also known as managerial leadership, it focuses on the role of
supervision, organization, and group performance; transactional
leadership is a style of leadership in which the leader promotes
compliance of his/her followers through both rewards and
punishments.
• Unlike Transformational leadership, leaders using the transactional
approach are not looking to change the future, they are looking to
merely keep things the same. Leaders using transactional leadership
as a model pay attention to followers' work in order to find faults and
deviations. This type of leadership is effective in crisis andemergency
situations, as well as for projects that need to be carried out in a
specific way.
 Transactional Leadership
• "Adhering to the path-goal theory, transactional leaders areexpected
to do the following:
• "Set goals, articulate explicit agreements regarding what the leader
expects from organizational members and how they will berewarded
for their efforts and commitment, and provide constructive feedback
to keep everybody on task" (Vera & Crossan, 2004, p. 224).
• Transactional leaders focus on increasing the efficiency of established
routines and procedures and are more concerned with following
existing rules than with making changes to the structure of the
organization.
 Transactional Leadership
• Thus, they operate most effectively in organizations that have
evolved beyond the chaotic, no-rules stage of entrepreneurial
development that characterizes so many new companies.

• Transactional leadership establishes and standardizes practices

that will help the organization reach maturity,emphasizing setting
of goals, efficiency of operation, and increase ofproductivity. "
 Transforming Leadership
• Transformational leadership is a style of leadership where the leader
works with employees to identify the needed change, creating a vision
to guide the change through inspiration, and executing the change in
tandem with committed members of the group.
• It also serves to enhance the motivation, morale, and job performance
of followers through a variety of mechanisms; these include connecting
the follower's sense of identity and self to the project and the collective
identity of the organization; being a role model for followers in order to
inspire them and raise their interest in the project; challenging followers
to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the
strengths and weaknesses of followers, allowing the leader to align
followers with tasks that enhance theirperformance.
 Transforming Leadership
• According to Burns, transformational leadership can be seen when
"leaders and followers make each other advance to a higher level of
morality and motivation.“
• Through the strength of their vision and personality, transformational
leaders are able to inspire followers to change expectations,
perceptions, and motivations to work towards common goals.
• Unlike in the transactional approach, it is not based on a "give and take"
relationship, but on the leader's personality, traits and ability to make a
change through example, articulation of an energizing vision and
challenging goals. Transforming leaders are idealized in the sense that
they are a moral exemplar of working towards the benefit of the team,
organization and/or community.
 Transforming Leadership
• Transformational leadership can be defined based on the impact that it
has on followers. Transformational leaders garner trust, respect,and
admiration from their followers.

• Involves considerations that go beyond individual interest to the goal of the

group or the larger collective, and is guided by other values which Burns
calls “end” values. These include those larger purposes to be served by the
action of the parties involved, values such as justice, community, freedom,
equality, and the rule oflaw.

• In transforming action, people are called to rise above self-interest and the
often petty grievances engendered by self interest to pursue those larger
social ends which justify the social organism in the first place.
TRANSACTIONA
L
SUPERVISION
• Transactional supervision takes place within an individual supervisory
episode and within an organizational context.

• On an individual basis, this initially will involve what we have called

the heuristics of moral action, namely the exploration of and
agreement upon those procedures, ground rules and guidelines
which both parties will follow in order to maintain the exchange on a
moral plane. Once those are agreed upon, the supervisor and
colleague must follow throughout and maintain those basic valuesof
honesty, fair play, loyalty, etc. This will allow the integrity of each
person to be respected and their sense of professional autonomy
honored.
• It follows that the supervisory episode will serve the larger purposes
of the school, so that the transactional supervision ultimatelybenefits
the education of the children involved as well as, serves some of the
instrumental goals of the school, such as the improvement of good
order in the school, and improved communications between teachers
and curriculum directors.

• The supervisor serves as an information carrier bringing information

from “below” to those “above” and vice versa, so that those above
can anticipate problems before they occur.
TRANSFORMATIONA
L SUPERVISION
• Transformation action involves larger end values such as justice,
equality, freedom, community.
• In a school, those large end values might include the following:
 Education of the whole person
 Education for citizenship
 Education for excellence
 Respect for sacredness of each person
 Promotion of a tradition or culture
 Promotion of human values
 Promotion of global perspectives
• Transformational action invites the individual and the community to
seek these larger, common good values.
• In a school setting, supervisors have opportunities to engage in at
least three (3) kinds of transformational moralactions.
1. It involves a relationship withindividual members of the staff which
supports that person’s efforts at major transformation of his or her
life.
2. It involves bringing individual teachers to a greater commitment to
the end values of the school such that their day-to-day action with
children intentionally attends to thosevalues.
3. It involves the supervisor’s leadership ability to work with a group
of other administrators and teachers to bring about a
transformation of the schoolitself.
 INDIVIDUAL
TRANSFORMATION
• The exchange between a
supervisor and a teacher can be
relatively superficial or relatively
profound.

• Most of the time, as research

shows, the interaction between
teachers and administrators and
supervisors is very brief and ad
hoc.
• There will be an occasional moment when a
supervisor encounters a person who is going
through a crisis of a life-changing dynamic.
Frequently, all that is required or desired is simple
acceptance or support. Beyond that, asympathetic
ear, a clarifying question, a rephrasing of what the
person is saying can enable the person to name
the feeling or problem he or she is grappling with.
Tobe sure, the transforming choices must be
made by the individual involved.
• This kind of responsiveness to a teacher can be
termed moral action because the supervisor has
moved beyond bureaucratic and technical
functions to engage another being at a deeply
human level. That response is guided not only by
transactional values of respect and loyalty butby
transforming values of freedom andcommunity.
• Beyond these personal crises, a supervisor may
have a long term transforming influence on a
teacher. The coaching protocols and the approach
to clinical supervision can transform his/her
teaching. In these cases, however, the
transformation came about only after repeated
encouragement, trial and error, struggling with
the understanding of what one was trying to do,
practice, and gradual mastery of a variety of
teaching strategies. The patience and persistence
of both supervisor and teacher over several years
holds the key to suchtransformations.
COMMITMENT TO LARGE
EDUCATIONAL VALUES
• The leader is the one who holds up a vision of what theschool can
become.
• The leader engages “purposing”, that is, in frequently recalling those
large purposes which the school is supposed to be serving. Within the
school culture, someone has to articulate and encourage those end
values that stand behind all the functional rationality of the school.
• If people have a deep ownership of the larger goals of the schools,
attention to those goals can lead people to lay aside those irritations
and to work with a greater sense of teamwork for these goals.
• Allegiance to large educational goals draws everyone’s perspective
away from the small grievances and invites a pride in working toward
such goals.
 TRANSFORMING THE
SCHOOL OR THE SYSTEM
• Supervisors can encourage administrators in the school to re-examine all
their administrative practices in the light of those school-wide goals that
sound so nice when voiced from the podium on graduation day, yet sadly
ignored in practice in the daily life of the school.

• Instead of constantly wandering with procedures that violate some

transactional value, supervisors may need to look at how the school
practices those large values it espouses in its school wide goals or mission
statement.

• Supervisors are in a central position of influence to affect decisions.

Because they work with an extensive network of information, they are at
least in a position to mobilize sentiment and opinion to bring various
segments of the community to an expressed concern to purse those larger
purposes of schooling.
• This last consideration of transformingmoral action –
the transformation of a school or a school system –is
the weighty responsibility one could ask a supervisor
to assume. It should be undertaken, therefore, only
when circumstances clearly seem to requireit.
 Supervision for Moral Development

THE POLITICS OF THE

POSSIBLE
 “The politics of the possible”

The original phrase is "Politics is the art of the possible", which

means, "It's not about what's right or what's best. It's about what
you can actually get done". It's associated with Realpolitik, a political
philosophy of setting pragmatism over your ideological goals.Getting
everything you want is impossible, and often, you have to severely
compromise in order to get anything you want at all. But in the end,
refusing to compromise means you get nothing whatsoever.
 Pragmatism (noun)

: an approach that assesses the truth of meaning of

theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their
practical application
• The moral dimensions of supervision are possible and desirable

• The levels of teachers' cognitive, conceptual and ego development

have a direct relationship to student behavior and student
performance ,

• The levels of moral development would also relate to student

behavior. Thus, the moral growth of those who educate thestudents
takes on a greater degree of concern and importance.
• The precise shape such moral activity takes in anygiven
circumstance will depend on what is possible in that
circumstance. The moral development of the people
involved will always be expressed in unique ways; the
psychological chemistry will always be unique to those
people, at a given time and place. Moral action is
conditioned by the context in which it is exercised.
Hence moral action is always negotiated according to
the politics of thepossible.
 CONCLUSION
Supervision is a morally loaded practice. Opposite views would
locate morality in the periphery of supervision. Moral resources
would be located in traditional moral philosophy, that is, external
to the practice of supervision. My argument is for an expansion of
the moral in supervision. This means that supervision may be
understood as for instance a psychological, educational,
sociological, theological, and moral practice. There is no particular
moral domain in supervision. Everything in supervision has a
potential moral aspect. First, and foremost, the moral concerns
supervision as a quest for the good.