Protect the society
The two articles exhaustively seek to shed more light into the contentious issue of the evolution of the school district superintendent’s position and the conceptualized duties/roles that school district superintendents have assumed and continue play. The two authors seem to differ greatly in their mode of rolling out the historical accounts of the evolution of the school district superintendents.
Callahan for instance, uses a discursive approach based on rhetoric and writings to investigate the societal expectations of the roles of school superintendents. While on the other hand Kowalski follows a developmental approach based on the principle that superintendent’s role has matured over the years, to bring to the light the debate over the professional preparation and the state licensing of the superintendents position.
Nevertheless, both articles seem to assume a similar design of pursuing their core objectives. For instance, with Callahan’s main goal of examining the societal expectations on the position of the school superintendent in mind one may find the article veering off its perceived course due to the fact that it vividly chronicles both the societal and professional trends that have shaped the conceptualized school superintendents position.
[Callahan, R. E. (1966)] Kowalski on his part equally follows a similar path when he chronicles the evolutional developments that the position of the school superintendents has gone through only to point out later on that the evolution account was meant to give credit to the depth and complexity of the position’s knowledge base. [Bjork L. G. & Kowalski T. J. (Eds. ) (2005)]
Callahan’s article uses a great deal of writings from other historians alike to put together his work, all the same he manages to give a detailed account of how the four conceptualized roles of the school superintendent came into being; he begins by accusing the earliest behaviors of superintendents of hiding behind the professional cloaks and their rigidity as being the reasons that limited the school superintendents to the earliest role of “teacher-scholar. ” On the role of superintendents as managers he points out to the economic transition that America was experiencing during the early 1900s i.
e. from an agrarian to an industrialized economy. The obvious needs by the nation to conform to the economic demands of industrialization resulted into superintendents assuming the roles of “managers. ” His historical analysis of the period between 1930 and 1950 convinces him that the assumed role of “democratic leader” was as a result of scarcity of funds and therefore school superintendents had to play politics in order to lobby the enactment of legislatures that were considerate of their plight.
Lastly he gives a detailed account of the reasons that led to school superintendents to assume the role of “applied social scientists. ” He quotes the word war II factor, the resurgence of criticism on public education in the 1950s, the rapid developments witnessed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the support from the Kellogg Foundation as the four main reasons that led to the assumption of the fourth role. [Callahan, R. E. (1966)]
Kowalski’s article having been written very much later from Callahan’s work gives a detailed account of a fifth conceptualized role that the school superintendents have assumed and that conspicuously missed in Callahan’s work. He points out the technological innovations that have been made in the information technology sector as being a great factor that has remodeled the work of the school superintendents. The information age which we are living in has brought great changes in the school governance.
As a result superintendents have assumed the role of “communicators” in order to remain relevant with developments, especially now that the American society is changing from a manufacturing base to an information base. [Bjork L. G. & Kowalski T. J. (Eds. ) (2005)] Callahan concludes that the conceptualization of the roles that the school superintendents continue to assume will help the education stake holders to see the relevancy that the post carries with in the shaping of the American education.
The historical account he gives out is a just but a tiny fraction of the challenges that school superintendents continue to go through in their quest to remain relevant to the professional and socio-economic and political changes. [Callahan, R. E. (1966)] Kowalski gives his own views in the form of a conclusion about the future of the professional preparation and state licensing of the school superintendents position. By giving out the historical account of the five role conceptualizations he provides a framework that for the preparation and licensing of school superintendents.
For instance, he notes that the exhibition of management competencies among the superintendents leads to the freeing school organizations from political interferences from government agencies. He asserts that the importance of licensing professionals is to protect the society and the licensee, and that the decision to deregulate a profession should not be made solely in political arenas which are known to hamper vested personal and group interests over the societal ones.
He therefore recommends that persons within a profession should exhibit responsibility, objectivity, and empiricism especially when dealing with policy matters. [Bjork L. G. & Kowalski T. J. (Eds. ) (2005)] It is evident from the two articles conclusion, that both authors desist from making binding conclusions or recommendations, maybe this is as a result of them having the knowledge that both professional and societal forces that perpetuates changes in the superintendents position are not easily predicted.
They just give their views and leave the debate about the expectations, the preparation and the licensing of the superintendents’ position to continue. References: Callahan, R. E. (1966). The superintendent of schools: A historical analysis. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 0104 410). Bjork L. G. & Kowalski T. J. (Eds. ) (2005). Contemporary Superintendents: Evolution of School District Superintendent Position. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
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