School administrators as instructional leaders: structuring supervisory supports for secondary mathematics teachers

Berry, Stephanie Nicole

Item

School administrators as instructional leaders: structuring supervisory supports for secondary mathematics teachers

Berry, Stephanie Nicole

Date

2025-04-21

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore how secondary school administrators engaged in instructional leadership behaviors with mathematics teachers. The study addressed two research questions: 1) What characterizes feedback related to teaching and learning that secondary administrators provide to mathematics teachers, and how does feedback vary depending on administrators’ content expertise? 2) What factors enable or hinder how school administrators approach supervision and coaching to secondary math teachers? This study adopted a comparative case study approach, document analysis, and interviews with six school administrators. This was a phenomenological case study. Data collection was from both semi-structured interviews and physical documents. Six secondary school administrators were interviewed and at least three to five physical documents were collected from participants. The physical documents represented feedback given to mathematics teachers. Data were analyzed using Creswell and Poth’s (2018) data analysis spiral. Rich-thick descriptions were used to introduce each participant in the study. Themes emerged from both the self-reported feedback, interviews, and the documented feedback, physical documents. The findings conveyed that feedback given to secondary mathematics teachers did not substantially differ between secondary school administrators with no mathematics background and secondary school administrators with a mathematics background. Both groups focused on feedback that centered around pedagogical practices. The findings also conveyed that there were factors that enabled and hindered the school administrators’ engagement with mathematics teacher. Some of the enabling factors included support networks, personnel resources, and instructional training. Some of the hindering factors included time constraints, other responsibilities, and content knowledge.