Kasvatus 2024 Vol 55 No 2

Early childhood education (ECE) teacher training in Finland always includes teaching practice, which is carried out in a training ECE centre working in cooperation with the university.According to recent studies, teaching practice supervision is best realised as a joint activity of the work community at the practice ECE centre.In our research, we examine the supervisory agency described by the members of the work community of five training ECE centres from a sociocultural perspective.Our data consisted of three focus group interviews of different professional ECE groups which we approached with Greimas's tools of semiotic analysis (the actant model and modalities of agency).We identified the supervisory agency expressed by the different personnel groups by analysing the actor roles and operational aspirations that appeared in the interviews, as well as the relationships between the actors and the modalities of their agency.The results indicated that the ECE teachers and the ECE centre heads had strong agency in supervision, while the ECE child carers had limited agency.The teaching practice supervision was also intertwined with the professional development of the supervising ECE personnel.We propose that the participation of the members of the work community in the teaching practice supervision and in bringing personnel into joint discussions with the student could strengthen the professional competence of the entire community.In addition, the factors related to the supervision activity described in this study can be used to support the possibilities of the ECE centre workers' supervisory agency.