Lesson study is a professional development program that combines teachers’ active engagement and observation of teachers’ lessons. During a lesson study teachers collaborate in a lesson study team. In this study, four participating research supervisors have developed, taught, evaluated and redesigned a supervision meeting with a focus on undergraduate students’ research skills. During so-called research lessons, supervisors experimented with open questioning and giving positive feedback instead of giving instruction and explanations. As a result, the participating supervisors expected their students to substantiate, argue, and consider the choices they made. We aimed to identify the impact of this lesson study approach on research supervisors’ professionaldevelopment and specifically on their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as most important learning outcome. Triangulation by method was applied to measure supervisors’ learning outcomes and learning activities; learning reports, videotaped lesson study meetings, and exit interviews were analyzed on indicators of change (e.g. ‘I have learned’). Coding results showed two different learning outcomes and four different learning activities. Each learning outcome, and the corresponding activities were connected to the four domains of the Interconnected Model of Professional Growth. Different pathways for each supervisor’s PCK were determined by constructing pictorial representations per supervisor. This study shows that lesson study is a promising professionaldevelopment method that can have an impact on research supervisors’ PCK. Our supervisors followed different pathways of PCK change, in which the learningactivities of considering your own practice and getting ideas from others contributed the most to these changes.
This is a manual on ‘Selecting, Training and Supporting Supervisors’. This manual provides points of reference for making a considered choice in the selection, training and support of supervisors in organisations for children’s services. We know that the quality of the care provided is directly related to the outcomes for clients. And we know that learning from each other helps to improve this quality. A competent supervisor is essential in this.
Most professionalisation programmes to support teacher educators as research supervisors focus on the development of research skills. The methodology of practice-oriented research, in addition to a clear vision on the function, and purpose of student research often receives little attention. At the Amsterdam University of Applied Science, we developed such a vision and methodology and studied the development of 17 teacher educators as research supervisors during a programme that introduced this methodology. We questioned participants about affect, and understanding regarding their role as a student research supervisor, and their perception of their competences to perform that role. Results showed that teacher educators became more aware of their role, and became more critical about their own competencies. Growing awareness of the implications of their role as student research supervisors seemed to result in a lower self-efficacy regarding the performance of this role. Implications for the training of teacher educators are discussed.
