Supervision matters: Collegial, developmental and reflective approaches to supervision of teacher candidates

Abstract

This self-study examined the communication approaches of 15 university supervisors who oversaw teacher candidates enrolled in year-long, co-taught P-12 clinical experiences. Supervisors attended 20 hours of professional learning on pre-service co-teaching, developmental supervision, and instructional coaching. Findings indicated that our supervisors primarily used collaborative and nondirective communication approaches to improve candidates’ teaching skills, while facilitating collegial relationships between collaborating teachers and teacher candidates engaging in co-teaching, co-reflection, and co-generative dialogs. Ultimately, our findings suggested that these collaborative and nondirective communicative approaches played a significant role to enable our candidates to demonstrate self-directed and self-regulated learning.

Keywords

• university supervision
• developmental supervision
• co-teaching
• clinical experiences