LEVERAGING AN OVERLOOKED ALLY: EXAMINING THE ROLES AND TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES FOR UNIVERSITY SUPERVISORS OF STUDENT TEACHERS

University supervisors of student teachers are an essential component in teacher education, yet they are often contingent faculty who are outsiders to the university and receive little training or preparation for their work. This context is troubling because supervisors’ work is complex, multifaceted, and must bridge theory and methods coursework with clinical experiences. This study examined several facets surrounding university supervisors’ work: (1) Supervisors’ central roles and functions, (2) The tensions that exist between supervisors’ role definitions and their efficacy, (3) Formal and informal training supports for supervisors, and (4) Supervisors’ suggestions for training opportunities, organizational reforms, and policy initiatives to support their work. I conducted a case study of a teacher education program at a Research I institution in the Northeast that included survey, interview, and document analysis. Data from 28 supervisors and two co-directors of teacher education revealed that supervisors embodied the instructional coach role and, to a lesser but still important extent, the counselor / mentor and socializer into the profession roles. All supervisors acknowledged that they complete the basic functions of evaluation, but they do not appear to adopt the evaluator role. Interestingly, second career supervisors also embodied a service role whereby they view their work similar to volunteering. The primary tension supervisors faced occurred when their duty to evaluate student teachers interfered with other roles that they felt were more central to their work. Overall, supervisors did not receive significant formal training for their work, and most relied on individual communications with program coordinators or other supervisors for informal support. A lack of training allowed supervisors to retain their practitioner identities and avoid developing university-based, teacher educator identities. Finally, supervisors did not offer substantive suggestions for organizational reforms or policy initiatives to support their work, likely because their practitioner identity resulted in a high level of efficacy despite a lack of training. Moving forward, I suggest administrators at comparative universities clarify roles for supervisors, provide organizational supports for supervisor training and identity development, and maximize the use-value of evaluation for both supervisors and student teachers, thereby successfully leveraging supervisors to support student teacher development