Expectations of the triad members for the roles and responsibilities of university supervisors and cooperating EFL teachers during the pre-service practicum

Year 2015, Volume: 4 Issue: 2, 58 - 100, 22.12.2015

İlkay Bülbül Ayşe Akyel

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the expectations of the triad members, namely university supervisors, cooperating teachers and student teachers, regarding the roles and responsibilities of the university ELT supervisors and cooperating EFL teachers in Turkey during the pre-service practicum. In this study, the researchers also investigate whether there are institutional differences in expectations for the university supervisors’ and cooperating teachers’ roles. Data are collected via two questionnaires with the participation of 17 university supervisors and 238 EFL student teachers from four universities in Turkey and 116 cooperating teachers from schools in the context of university-school collaboration program. Findings indicate a lack of clarity and consensus among the triad members regarding the roles of the university supervisors and cooperating teachers. While triad members achieve high consensus on some of the role definitions of the university supervisors, they cannot reach high consensus on any role definitions of the cooperating teachers. Findings also show that there are no institutional differences among university supervisors regarding their own roles and those of the cooperating teachers, whereas student teachers hold different expectations for the roles of the university supervisors and cooperating teachers in certain areas.

Keywords: language teacher education, role expectation, school practicum, triad members