Types of Supervision in School
Maintain an awareness of your three primary roles as a supervisor: Educational Supervision: assessment of skills, evaluation of needs, provision of learning experiences, upgrading of knowledge and skills. The supervisor assures that workers know what constitutes substance abuse and assists them in working effectively and efficiently with families involved in substance abuse issues. Administrative Supervision: monitoring work and workload, assuring work completion, quality and quantity control, appropriate implementation of agency policies and procedures. The supervisor assures that the purpose, vision, and policies of the agency in terms of working with families involved in substance abuse are met.
Supportive Supervision: providing support, understanding and assistance, understanding emotional needs. The supervisor provides employees with a supportive environment where they can enjoy high morale and job satisfaction as they assist families involved in substance abuse issues.
Regulatory Supervision- This is not considered true supervision but represents those jobs which exist to provide direction, review judgments made by other sections or departments, set standards, policies and procedures, override judgments made by supervisors or managers of functions under their control or exercise similar controls.
Administrative services personnel regulating telecommunications, safety, property control and related activities exercise “regulatory supervision” over employees engaged in these activities.
The critical element is the degree of control within a job title’s description. If the job specification requires that positions review decisions, countersign decisions, reject inaccurate decisions, require deadlines and priorities, mandate policy and procedures, this represents supervision. It is not regulatory supervision if a job specification requires only giving advice, planning, suggesting amendments, identifying problems without implementing solutions or checking forms for accuracy prior to sending them to another jurisdiction. Use of this term can clean-up “functional supervision” by redefining it to include milder forms of direct supervision over other employees such as “working supervisors”, lead workers, assistant group supervisors, supervisors over groups for weeks or months at a time and other forms of supervision which almost meet our definition of direct supervision.
With an additional modifier, we can group jobs into three distinct areas as follows: DIRECT FIRST LINE SUPERVISORS OR HIGHER- Jobs for positions supervising the required number of subordinates (usually three or more), which exercise the required number of mandatory and optional supervisory elements. FUNCTIONAL SUPERVISION- Jobs for positions supervision one or two positions when the specs require more; supervise the required number of positions but don’t fulfill the supervisory elements (they don’t do service ratings or sign off on completed work); serve as assistant supervisor supervising in the absence of the boss; serve as lead workers setting the pace for other employees or serve as a true supervisor for a few days or months when assigned to a special program or project but don’t supervise the required percentage of time.
REGULATORY SUPERVISION- Jobs which exercise control and authority over employees as a high percentage of their job (70%+), and perform supervisory elements over a number of other positions (at least 10). Additional adjective may be added as follows: Regulatory Supervision-State-Supervision over classified state employees and their functions. Regulatory Supervision-Non-State- Supervision over non-state employees such as contractors, consultants, other governmental employees or related. NON-SUPERVISORY- Jobs which claim no control over other employees or simply serve as a resource person, expert, trainer, planner, processor of document without authority to control the employees from whom the document were sent.
