Clinical supervision in the Malaysian teaching practicum context

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate the supervision behaviour as a viable way of guiding, educating and supporting trainee teachers. 32 clinical supervision techniques were measured in terms of the degree of clinical supervisory behaviours. The respondents consisted of 102 guiding teachers from the University Technology of Malaysia who involved in 2004 school-based teaching practicum. The data yielded that guiding teachers were agreed in most of the techniques. Although there were uncertainty in several techniques it was not affected the overall agreement of the activity. This was however suggests that there was still work to be done regarding the implementation of various techniques in supervising teacher trainee. The study also indicates that teacher trainees may experience considerable variation in the quality of the supervision they received depending on the approaches that the guiding teacher’s practising. Implications however, are drawn about the role of the guiding teachers in helping teacher trainees overcome their concerns associated with the early stages of professional development; setting up a comprehensive programme which includes the activities of identifying appropriate approaches, clarifying the function of the guiding teachers and strengthening the existing school – university partnership in teacher education.