Supervising Teaching Practice: Role Perceptions And Challenges

Abstract

The goal of this study was to examine how faculty members of a preservice teacher education programme perceived their role as a supervisor in teaching practice and the challenges they encountered in this process. All the supervisors believed their primary role was to facilitate theory-practice connections in their interns’ teaching. To develop a deeper understanding of their learners and becoming a better human being in the process along with developing their pedagogical skills was the larger purpose of a supervision. Their role went beyond just providing academic support, they had to be their interns’ emotional support system. Helping interns cope with the pressures of work, and socialising them into the community of practitioners was an important role that they had to fulfil even though it was not delineated in the official document of the programme. Among the several challenges faced during supervision, they considered providing individual attention to interns while dealing with a large group, intern diversity and assessment related issues as some of the important challenging of their task.