Supervisory Practices Used By Teacher Educators in Agriculture

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to determine the status of student teacher supervision in agricultural education, the extent to which teacher educators in agricultural education used select models of supervision, and the relationship between the level of supervision and selected indicators of supervisor maturity. Results of this census study provide benchmark data on supervisory practices followed by teacher educators in agriculture. The supervisors (N=145) who participated in the study devoted, on average, 20% of their academic appointment to supervision. The majority of the respondents had received formal training on supervision. On average, respondents had been a university supervisor for 13 years and had served as a cooperating teacher for two student teachers. Based on the proposed Escalation Model, respondents used components of the structured level to a higher extent than the moderately structured or relatively unstructured levels. In addition, there was a low to negligible correlation between selected indicators of supervisor maturity and the most frequently used level of the Escalation Model.