Scaffolding Development of Clinical Supervisors: Learning to be a Liaison

Teacher education as a field has embraced the idea that clinically-based teacher education will better support teacher candidate learning and the learning of their future preK-12 students (AACTE, 2018; NCATE, 2010). Likewise, teacher education scholars have emphasized the importance of learning to teach well in clinical practice (Darling-Hammond, 2014). We five women teacher educators engaged in a collaborative self-study to investigate our different perspectives and our institution’s hope for mentoring and preparing new liaisons. Our collaborative self-study focused on the research question: What are the key factors that play a part in influencing the developmental trajectory of a liaison? Through a collaborative self-study of our clinical supervision work as university liaisons, we identified the importance of community toward developing agency as teacher educators. Our year-long self-study involved journaling about our liaison experiences and our developmental trajectory in becoming teacher educators across time and multiple contexts.