Defining the Job of University Supervisor: A Department-Wide Study of University Supervisor's Practices

As prior secondary teachers, the authors had served as cooperating teachers for student teachers and had worked with university supervisors from local colleges and universities, and during their graduate work at different universities, they had supervised the student teachers themselves. Consequently, the authors, as well as most participants in teacher education, were quite familiar with the use of the term "university supervisor" to describe the individual who oversees student teachers' work and represents the university during teacher candidates' internship in the K-12 schools. As they discussed their prior work with student teachers, however, they discovered that, although they had had similar experiences, their practices were certainly not identical. This finding prompted them to question the notion of universality in the practices of university supervisors. They wanted to determine whether there was clear understanding, not only across the nation but even within one department, of what a university supervisor actually does. This study explores how individual university supervisors, operating within a teacher education department of a college of education at a large public U.S. institution, valued, defined, and enacted their supervision of student teachers. (Contains 4 tables and 1 note.)