To begin with, teachers, like all individuals, should be treated with dignity, respect, and confidence the same way students should be treated. All teachers, whether young or old, extraordinarily competent or staggeringly inept, deserve systematic support and assistance to change, grow, improve, and share. This can only be accomplished through effective leadership. A process known as the supervisory behavioral continuum, is an effective model for displaying behaviors used in a decision-making process. Skillful and effective use of this model and knowledge of human behavior can ultimately save time, money, and prevent unneeded friction between administration and staff. The continuum gives the supervisor a method to deal effectively with everyday issues that occur at the workplace, and to come up with a workable solution that makes everyone happy. .
Consider the four approaches to working with and supervising teachers: non-directive, collaborative, directive-informational, and directive-control. In a situation where the teachers are self-starters, who are resourceful and curious, and who work well professionally, a non-directive approach letting the teacher take the lead in their development would be the appropriate approach. In a situation where a lack of common learning goals across departments or grade levels and teachers working mostly in private, a directive informational approach would be appropriate. In a situation where a school with a common history of fragmented efforts to improve but little open and visible collaboration among teachers to see each other at work or to review the work of each other's students, a collaborative approach would be appropriate. Finally, in a school marked by isolation, routine, privacy, stagnation or decline in the achievement of students, and resistance to individual or collective change, directive-control is necessary. .
The direction of leadership and development of instructional change should be a shift of responsibility for growth from supervisor to teacher and then from teacher to student.
