How can it be assessed? This is a dilemmic field and an emerging one at that. I do not know of any methods at present. Yet, it can be assessed via supervisors comment. The seeming ambiguity of supervisors feedback makes it difficult to assess such impact at the time. Thank you.

Peter,

I suggest that you send a message to Judith Lederman about the IIT teacher education program. We have extensive evaluation instruements, observation protocols, and supervision techniques that are all research based in science education.

Norm

Thanks for your responses and engagement Norm and Oyebode.

Peter

@ Dr. Norm_ Can I do this too? I suppose it will be worth the while having a glimpse at the instruments too. The research by Brett's and associates is quite insightful.

@ Brett_Are we not in trouble in the teacher education field as we continue to use persons who are not teacher educators as supervisors during teaching practice on account of the large number of students to be supervised? How do we manage this in the coming years vis-a-vis the highlight of your paper on the non-coherence of reportage of PRESETs performance with learning outcomes?

Hello Oyebode - It's worth clarifying your question. As I take it you are not questioning the qualities of supervising teachers in schools here, but the quality of university supervisors who are not employed as teacher educators (perhaps employed part-time by universities for school visit roles - my own institution employs retired principals or senior teachers in these roles sometimes). If you are querying the capacity of this cohort of part-time university mentors to appropriately advise supervising teachers as to the nature of their feedback to PRESETs around their performance then the answer lies in the training and expectations of this cohort of university mentors.

The quality of training and preparation of supervising teachers is a separate question - certainly it is important that PRESETs are supported by caring and professional role models, fully committed to inducting new teachers into the profession and who are fully aware of their mentoring responsibilities.

@Brett_Supervising teachers, university mentors, employment of retired teachers and senior school teachers. These are terms relatively alien to our model of teqching practice. We use cooperating teachers for subject teachers in the school where a PRESET is posted. University mentors probably are the ones we call university assigned supervisors who are usually faculty members in different disciplines. The employment of senior teachers? Who pays them? Your school? Or their appointment s non-stipendary? We don't do that here. The need for quality training of university assigned supervisors/mentors is sine qua non to the professional development of the pre service teachers. I quite agree with you that asides training, they must be fully aware of their responsibilities. I am contemplating a study on the comments of university assigned supervisors vis a vis clarity, objectivity and ..... What other indices would you suggest.

Hello again Oyebode. Yes nomenclature can get tricky/slippery and is different in different national jurisdictions. Interestingly at a late point in the writing of this paper, what we had called 'Colleague Teachers' in my State of Australia (Tasmania) became 'Supervising Teachers' as part of common national nomenclature related to a current national project related to the competencies demonstrated by Graduating teachers.

To your questions. Yes - the Faculty pay for part-time 'Associate Staff' to 'top up' regular/full-time faculty staff in undertaking school quality assurance visits. I should add that it is the school-based staff who assess the pre-service teachers' performance at the end of their placements not the university staff. Visits from University staff are for quality assurance purposes (and to have conversations with the supervising teachers as much as the pre-service teachers on placement).

Yes - there is scope in thinking about what classroom-based teachers and university staff new to observing pre-service teachers in classrooms 'see' and 'record'. There are some existing studies on this, but perhaps not in the Nigerian context. There is evidence (consistent with my attached article) that classroom teachers as observers tend to point out and record the 'observable' manifestations of teaching - e.g. quality of explanations, classroom and behaviour management, questioning and relationships rather than necessarily thinking about, for example, the quality of the students' learning or the impact of the teachers' conceptual subject knowledge on their planning of the learning.

I agree with you that colleagues new to initial teacher education should be guided, coached and/or mentored when they first undertake lesson observation and feeding back to students. I felt as though I learned 'on the job' when I first entered initial teacher education in 1993. It would have been good to both see some good examples of insightful classroom observation feedback and to see the subsequent discussion with the pre-service teacher. There is a psychological and confidence-building element, too. Ideally a teacher educator elicits from the pre-service teacher what they thought of as the strengths and weaknesses of a lesson and draws key points out socratically, rather than launching into 'the verdict'.....(!)

Comparing practices is indeed opening my eyes to what works and why some systems may keep on struggling to get by. Thank you for these insights. I won't mind materials on Initial Teacher Education Practices in your domain. I also humbly request for the criteria used by supervising teachers in reaching conclusion on the performance of graduating teachers. I am an early career entrant in the teacher education field- just 4 years in the field- and I am overwhelmed already by the quality of graduates we turn out in our system. I am willing to learn the best practices in the field and receive insights on how to contribute meaningfully to the field. I earnestly await your response Sir.

Hi Oyebode - The two attached documents may be of interest to you.

One identifies the 37 national Standards that all Graduating teachers in Australia must meet before being certified. To some extent supervising teachers when observing lessons are looking for evidence of these qualities/capabilities/practices.

The second is an observation sheet for supervising teachers - not from my own Faculty - which I like for its emphasis upon the quality of student responses and student learning (responding to teacher direction, explanations, questioning and guidance).

I hope that one or both of these documents have some salience/value in your working context.

Thank you Sir for these. I will print and reflect more on them vis-a-vis the article you earlier posted. It's been wonderful and insightful discussing with you. I will make it a duty to read some of your other works that are open access. Hope you won't mind seeking clarifications from you if need be? Stay great.

Hi, Peter,

thank you for your documents above. I respect an Australian approach to education because I find sime common points with Czech approach. For example, I use

Fien, J., Gerber, R., & Wilson, P. (1984). The Geography Teacher's Guide to the Classroom. South Melbourne: The Macmillan Company of Australia PTY Ltd., it is about concepts (on cultural basis). And now I watch other Australian comments on education (Mark Gould and others). Well done.

Thanks Jaroslav - I like these recent papers by Australian Geography educators:

Preston, Lou 2015, The place of place-based education in the Australian primary geography curriculum, Geographical education, vol. 28, pp. 41-49.

Kidman, G., 2017. School geography: what interests students, what interests teacher?, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education,

DOI: 10.1080/10382046.2017.1349374.

and the attached paper. I hope that at least one of these chimes with your interests and context. Thanks for your engagement with this strand.

For readers of this paper outside the Australian context, I would be interested to hear how you guide/encourage supervising teachers to comment upon the impact of pre-service teachers' work with school students across the period of a placement, when they draw together review and evaluation thoughts at the end of the placement.