International Portal of Teacher Education

Source: Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, Vol. 20, No. 3, August 2012, 379–392
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)

This study aimed to examine post-lesson observation conferencing discourse between university supervisors (USs) and physical education teacher education students (PTs).

Methods
The study took place at a large research university in the northeastern USA.
The participants were three university supervisors (USs) and 25 physical education teacher education students (PTs). The university supervisors completed a questionnaire related to demographic information and their perceptions of their role as a supervisor. These USs then audio-recorded post-lesson observation conferences that they held with their PTs.

Discussion
The findings reveal that PTs spoke slightly more than USs in the post-observation conferences. This finding suggest that the supervisory model used was one of collaboration, with a fairly equal sharing of responsibility between USs and PTs.

Nonetheless, the supervisors demonstrated the ability and a willingness to allow their PTs to share in the conferencing discourse. This finding correlates to the supervisors’ perceptions of their role as supervisors.
In addition, it was found that of all of the idea units spoken by USs, 31% of them were questions.

The findings reveal that the supervisors had far more higher order questions and offerings than they did lower order ones. physical education teacher education students also had far more higher order offerings than ones of lower order.

Conclusion
The authors conclude that the university supervisors demonstrated a collaborative style of conferencing that allowed preservice teachers plenty of opportunities to speak. Many factors impacted the time spent conferencing with the most important being time constraints. However, it was found that the supervisors recognized the importance of these constraints and have taken steps to allow for adequate time.