Synchronous virtual supervision of professional experience: issues and challenges

The supervision of professional experience undertaken by tertiary students is an important component of any university programme. In Australia and other countries where there are vast distances between the university and the setting in which professional experience takes place, direct supervision by university academic staff is problematic. Alternate arrangements are sometimes put in place such as telephone links, emails, and on-line discussion boards. This paper explores the feasibility of synchronous virtual supervision in Australia with a view to develop positive reflective practice in pre-service teachers. This paper highlights the technical, ethical and logistical difficulties in using synchronous virtual supervision of teacher education students and points out the potential of this technology to overcome some long-standing problems associated with distances between universities and regional, rural, and remote schools. While this paper focuses on teacher education the same principles can be applied to other professions where there is a professional field experience