Abstract

This research aimed to examine the school supervisors, principals and teachers’ perception towards the supervision implementation conducted by the supervisors from the education authority. This study used a descriptive method using a qualitative analysis approach. The findings of this study showed that the supervisors’ perception to the supervision implementation toward the principals and teachers was in line with the supervision principles and it has contributed to the quality of education. Meanwhile, the principals and teachers’ perception to the supervision implementation conducted by the school supervisors was different. The principals and teachers’ perception showed that the school supervisors only examined for the completion of the learning administration without concerning about the optimal guidance and coaching, therefore, the contribution of school supervisors did not meet the principals and teachers’ expectations.

Research Article

The Analysis of Supervision Perception at the Elementary School in Aceh Besar, Indonesia

Cut Nurul Fahmi1, Eli Nurliza2, Murniati AR3, Nasir Usman4

1,2Lecturer of Serambi Mekkah University

3,4Lecturer of Syiah Kuala University

ABSTRACT: This research aimed to examine the school supervisors, principals and teachers’ perception towards the supervision implementation conducted by the supervisors from the education authority. This study used a descriptive method using a qualitative analysis approach. The findings of this study showed that the supervisors’ perception to the supervision implementation toward the principals and teachers was in line with the supervision principles and it has contributed to the quality of education. Meanwhile, the principals and teachers’ perception to the supervision implementation conducted by the school supervisors was different. The principals and teachers’ perception showed that the school supervisors only examined for the completion of the learning administration without concerning about the optimal guidance and coaching, therefore, the contribution of school supervisors did not meet the principals and teachers’ expectations.

Key words: perception, supervision, education

Introduction

1. Education supervision is specifically applied in education, it aims to develop students’ potential through qualified learning activities served by teachers. It is specific because the supervision is related to students’ recognition and appreciation as human who need to be respected and appreciated. It is different from the supervision of goods producing process.
2. Supervision is one of the mechanisms in improving the professionalism performance to create a better students’ learning process through a better teaching. In general, supervision aims to develop and achieve effective and relevant teaching and learning process through improving teachers’ ability. Supervision works to coordinate all the school efforts, broaden teachers’ experiences, encourage creative learning, provide sustainable assessment, as well as provide knowledge and creativity to the teachers.
3. Some experts have proposed different definitions of supervision. Daryanto (2010:181) stated that “supervision is monitoring to collect data, and the data is used to explore problems and obstacles to be used as the basic consideration in discovering solutions for improvement”.
4. Priansa dan Somad (2014:83) explained that supervision is an effort to provide services for the teachers to assist them to be a more professional teacher in serving their duty. Sagala (2013:198) asserted that supervision cannot be defined narrowly as a process to monitor and improve teaching in a classroom instead it should be broader describing the relation between supervision and the teaching quality.
5. In Indonesia, the implementation of supervision is conducted by the principals, and the education authority as the supervisors. The supervisors from the education authority visit certain schools to coach the teachers at least once in a month.
6. The main purpose of supervising the schools is to direct and guide the principals, teachers, and staff at the school. Meanwhile, the principals also guide the teachers on the agreed timetable.
7. Supervision is a professional monitoring in the academic field which should be implemented based on the principles of the field of working, understanding the learning process in depth instead of the usual monitoring.
8. The term supervision or monitoring in education is identified as a professional supervision, it is certainly related to some events and activities, for example if the supervision is conducted by the school principals, the supervision carries out to monitor the teachers’ performance in teaching, however if the supervision is conducted by supervisors from the education unit, the school principals in the institutional context will be the main goal in improving the overall education quality.
9. The perception of teachers, principals, and supervisors of the education authority is important to improve the implementation of supervision. The improvement and increasing learning quality at school is related to the supervision effectiveness. Therefore, supervisors recommend encouraging students to improve their personal and professional ability.
10. This research aimed to examine the school supervisors’ perception toward the supervision activity conducted by the supervisors, and how the principals and teachers’ perception towards the supervision implementation conducted by the school supervisors.
11. Research method
12. The research used a descriptive method employing a qualitative analysis. This method was selected by considering the data describing a more complex social reality becoming a concrete `social symptoms. The subjects in this study were the supervisors from the education authority, teachers and principals in two primary school in Aceh Besar, Indoneia. The techniques of data collection used were interview, observation, and documentation. The stages of data analysis were data reduction, data presentation and conclusion.

Research findings

1. In this section, two perceptions will be discussed: the perception of school supervisors from the education authority and the perception of principals and teachers.
2. The perception of supervisors from the education authority in the implementation of education.
3. In the implementation of supervision activities, some school supervisors think that they have properly conducted their duties as a supervisor and have designed the programs of supervision implementation and the plan of the learning supervision. The techniques used were individual and group techniques.
4. Academic supervision plan is started from designing the supervision program by analyzing the programs implemented in the previous years. The researchers found some weaknesses needed to be improved from reviewing the previous analysis results to increase the quality of learning and teachers’ professionalism such as the development of indicators and learning materials, less diverse learning method, and the lack of teachers’ ability concerning active learning methods.
5. The perception of principals and teachers toward supervision activities implemented by the supervisors from the education authority.
6. The supervision implementation conducted by the school supervisors did not optimally contribute to the teachers’ competences, the focus of the school supervisors was mostly on the learning administration instead of the teaching and learning process and coaching the teachers. The supervisors were expected to be the teachers’ advisors and therefore teachers should obtain the guidance and advices.
7. The supervision implementation conducted by the supervisors had less contribution to the learning process. The supervisors rarely visited the school resulting in teachers obtaining less guidance seemed to be the main reason for this problem. The supervisors’ priority was examining the administrations.
8. Supervisors did not involve the principals and teachers to design and plan the programs. In addition, they did not clearly explain the vision and mission of the supervision. The supervision programs seemed to be unplanned and they did not refer to the teachers’ need. It impacted to the lack of teachers’ trust to the supervisors in solving problems related to the teaching and learning process.
9. In examining the lesson plans, the school supervisors only commented that the plans did not satisfy the characteristics of 2013 curriculum without providing any suggestions and revisions on how the lesson plans should be designed. It is expected that the supervisors guide and advise the teachers in designing the lesson plans.

Results and discussions

1. A supervisor is a professional person doing his duties, he/she works based on the scientific principles to improve the education quality. In conducting the supervision, excellent skills of identifying problems thoroughly to improve the education quality is needed. Moreover, the supervisors had to have the sensitivity to understand the problems in depth. The supervisors require to utilize their sensitivity to understand as the object of the observation is not concrete, instead they require a more sensitive insight and inner eye sensitivity. They should contribute to the improvement of the academic quality related to efforts of providing better learning atmosphere in term of both academic and physical aspect.
2. Glickman (in Priansa dan Somad, 2014: 106) explained that academic supervision is a series of activities to help teachers develop their ability in designing the learning to achieve the learning objectives. Prasojo et al (2011: 94) asserted that supervision is a series of activities to help teachers in designing the learning process.
3. Academic supervision is a series of activities to support teachers in conducting educative and qualified learning process. This is based on the effective and qualified assumption of the education institution. These efforts are to provide technical helps to the teachers in the learning implementation to achieve excellent results. The indicator of excellent results can be seen from the level of curriculum materials comprehended by the students.
4. The principals and teachers did not have positive perception towards the school supervisors, they claimed that the supervisors only examined the learning administration while for the improvement of learning was not done well. It is expected that supervisors not only seek for the mistakes regarding the leaning administration such as a lesson plan but also guide and advise the principals, teachers and staff at school, for example guiding the teachers in designing the learning instruments.
5. The findings mentioned earlier were in line with Ahmet Kelesolu’s ( 2010) findings: supervisors perceive themselves that they contribute to education, however, the perception of principals and teacher is just the opposite. Negative perceptions about primary education supervisors indicate that they cannot make the contribution that is expected from them. Also, the research findings of Marselina ( 2014) indicated that teachers’ perception concerning the implementation of learning supervision toward the management business group in Padang was not optimal in evaluating the learning conducted at schools.
6. Willes (in Sagala 2013: 195) stated that supervision is an assistance in the development of a better teaching-learning situation. This statement is in line with Amatembun ( in sagala 2013) Who asserted that education supervision is a guidance for the education situation, the improvement focuses on the learning performance and therefore the teachers professionally provide assistance and learning services to the students.
7. Masaong (2013: 61) explained that as the teachers’ advisors, the supervisors should design an excellent plan to encourage the implementation of four competencies of teachers, namely: pedagogy, personality, social, and professional competencies. Thus, the school supervisors are demanded to have the supervision vision and mission that can be applied into the objectives and the strategies for the achievement. Each activity needs systematical and prospective plans to effectively achieve the education objectives. Therefore, the plan of supervision should be well-designed. Without the well-planned supervisions, the parties involved such as the teachers, principals, supervisors and students will be disappointed, especially the students who expect that the learning activities would be active, effective, creative and fun.
8. Suhardang (2010: 39) stated that the supervision of the technical implementation of education at school is not merely supervising the materials physically. Supervision means to take a control of the academic activity, the teaching and learning process, to monitor the teachers’ teaching, to supervise the students’ learning and its situation. The activities are carried out to identify the learning weaknesses and their causes as well the reason for the unsuccessful teachers in doing their duties. Based on the findings, some improvements are implemented in the form of guiding and advising. Guiding is both a service for the teachers and a preventive effort to avoid teachers committing the same mistakes. It is also to raise an awareness of developing their teaching competency and creativity.

Conclusion and suggestion

The results of the study show that supervisors have not been successful in guiding the principals and teachers optimally based on the principles of education quality development although the supervisors believed that they have done the best contribution. In addition, the principals and the teachers confirmed that the supervisors’ focus is on examining and assessing the learning administration. Their expectation of the supervision includes some recommendations to improve the learning quality and introductions to the new teaching methods to improve the education quality. Therefore, the supervisors should be the leader of the teachers to guide and advise the teachers including new ones who need intensive guidance. It is recommended that the supervisors visit the teachers once in a month to share some information related to new teaching methods to have more productive supervision which in turn will lead to achieving the objectives of education.