An investigation of the roles, relationships and experiences of part-time placement tutors in their supervision of student teachers on school placement
Initial teacher education represents the beginning of formal study for those who wish to pursue a career in teaching. The issue of teachers and teaching has become an important part of governmental policy in many countries, and the preparation of teachers has received much attention in recent years. Key to the preparation of future teachers is their experience of school placement; the opportunity afforded to them to gain real-life experience of teaching in a range of school settings. The student teacher, supported by the school-based cooperating teacher and the university-based placement tutor represent the school placement 'triad' (Macintyre and Morris 1980); the central figures in school placement. Many research studies have been conducted on the experiences and perspectives of student teachers and co-operating teachers. By comparison placement tutors, especially part-time placement tutors, have received considerably less attention. Yet this latter group of placement tutors are the mainstay of many initial teacher education programmes where fulltime staff, already stretched to capacity with teaching and research duties, are often unavailable to fulfil the role of placement tutor. The setting for this doctoral study was the final year school placement module of an undergraduate initial teacher education programme, in a university in the Republic of Ireland. The goal of the study was to explore the experiences, roles and relationships of part-time placement tutors in school placement. A multiple case study of six part-time placement tutors during a year of school placement was conducted. A tripartite theoretical framework using the constructs of Identity (Holland et al. 1998), Multimembership (Wenger 1998, 2009, 2010) and Third Space (Bhabha 1990; Zeichner 2010) was employed to inform the study. Data collection methods included individual interviews with the participants, observations of their practice and a researcher diary. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) was used to analyse the data. Three themes ...