Toward a Renewal of Supervisory Scholarship and Practice in Teacher Education: A Collaborative Self-Study

University supervision of teacher candidates is a well-recognized component of teacher preparation. However, teacher education has long devalued supervision, largely relying upon retired teachers, administrators, and graduate students to serve as supervisors, often with little training or support. Although clinical practice has received increased focus among accrediting bodies, supervision as a field of scholarship and practice continues to receive little support within institutions or attention in teacher education. As supervision practitioners and scholars, the three authors engaged in collaborative self-study, sharing and interrogating professional autobiographies and narratives related to supervision, to make sense of institutional and professional contexts and to interrogate the tensions of practice and legitimacy surrounding supervision in teacher education. Together, we acknowledged the complexity of supervision, challenged dominant narratives of supervision institutionally and professionally, and constructed new spaces of supervisory practice and learning. Learning from our experiences, teacher educators can better understand how to prepare and support future supervision scholars and practitioners.