Supervisory Skills, Knowledge, and Values Perceived as Important by Special Education Supervisors and Their Teachers

154 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1986.This study was designed to examine the supervisory skills, knowledge, and values of special education personnel with supervisory responsibility. The aspect of supervision addressed relates to the process of supervision and not to technical skills needed in specific special education positions. The focus was on interactive skills, values, and knowledge needed by supervisors in order to obtain educational goals.Twelve supervisors participated in an interview designed to examine their perceptions regarding the roles they held; the skills, knowledge, and values they viewed as important to the supervisory process; and the aspects of their preservice training they perceived as beneficial or needing the most improvement. The supervisors and 36 teachers they supervised completed similar questionnaires addressing the supervisory process. Content analysis of interviews was completed and questionnaire data were summarized.Results indicate that supervisors perceived communication, style flexibility, and conflict resolution skills as most important to the supervisory process. Areas of knowledge perceived as most critical were understanding personalities and technical skills. Honesty was the value discussed as being of greatest importance. Supervisors indicated that their strongest area of preservice training related to technical skill development. They perceived a need to improve training in interpersonal skills and to have more practicum experiences. Questionnaire data showed that teachers and supervisors disagreed on the level of importance of some of the skills identified although there was no significant difference between groups.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD