The supervised teaching practice period is internationally known as one of the most crucial and challenging elements for student teachers’ professional development in teacher education (Caires et al., 2012; A. Clarke et al., 2014). The teaching practice periods are arenas for bridging the theory–practice gap (Mankki et al., 2025), and for the students’ commitment to the teaching profession (Kantonen et al., 2020; Sandvik et al., 2019). The supervising teachers guides the teaching practice, act as role models for teaching, and provides support and constructive feedback on students’ lesson planning and teaching (A. Clarke et al., 2014; Huong et al., 2025). Therefore, school-based supervising teachers have a central role in teacher education when supporting student teachers in their professional development, but to support students, they must be secure in their own professional identity (Hudson, 2013).  

We know from prior studies that tension affect the professional identity development (Williams et al., 2012) and school-based supervising teachers experience tensions related to their dual professional identities as teachers and teacher educators (Andreasen et al., 2019). Previous research also indicate that school-based supervisors tend to prioritise their teacher role over their teacher educator role (Sandvik et al., 2019). While this is understandable, it still challenges the role of supporting students’ professional development. Therefore, the aim of this research was to enrich the understanding of practice supervision from school-based supervising teachers’ point of view, by examining their conceptions about the supervision process in terms of content and experienced tensions. In addition, supervision orientations (Vehviläinen, 2022) and personal practical theories (Maaranen et al., 2016) were examined as theoretical models for supporting both the supervision process and the challenges that occurred. Vehviläinen (2022) suggest that there are four orientations; teaching orientation, supportive orientation, problem-solving orientation and exploratory orientation, that should be used in a complementary way as they shape supervision actions. The personal practical theories (Maaranen et al., 2016) are a way of accessing beliefs about teaching or supervision and is often seen as a synonym to a professional identity. Supervisor’s beliefs about what good teaching or supervision is, not only affects how the supervision turns out, but the supervisor’s beliefs also influence the student’s beliefs (Valcke et al., 2010), which highlights the relevance of being aware of own beliefs. Overall, research concerning teacher educators’ use of personal practical theories is scarce and needs more research attention overall. To investigate school-based supervising teachers’ views on the supervision process, a socio-dynamic approach (Peavy, 1997) to supervision has been used as a theoretical framework for understanding supervision as an identity-supporting task, regarding both the student teacher’s evolving teacher identity, but also supervising teachers’ own teacher educator identity.

This research was conducted in Finland, using a generic qualitative approach to access school-based supervising teachers’ thoughts on the practice supervision process and the challenges they face, through both written material and semi-structured interviews. The participants were early childhood education and care teachers, basic education teachers, subject specific teachers or special education teachers, that were participating in a university arranged training for supervisors during 2019-2020. The written material: supervising teachers’ timelines (n=11 individual, n=4 group) about the supervision process and their personal practical theory statements (n=12) were collected in connection to the supervisor training, the material was conducted as course assignments designed by the lecturers of the training, and not for research purpose. The semi-structured online interviews (n=8) were conducted with the same supervisors, that gave their consent, although outside the supervisor training in 2021. The topic of the interview was related to the personal practical theory. Both content (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008) and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) has been utilized as analysis methods.

Based on the preliminary results in this research the assumption is that school-based supervising teachers experience difficulties developing teacher educator identities and needs further support in that identity development process. For supervision to be effective, practice supervision needs to be conceptualised as a conscious pedagogical activity and acknowledged as a formative dimension of teacher education. The presentation begins with viewing the theoretical framework, explaining central concepts concerning teacher educator ship and the methodological procedure in short. Then as a summary of the preliminary results in the study and relevant theory, a model illustrating the contextual and individual factors that both influence (i.e. tensions) and support (i.e. self-reflection) the teacher educator identity development is presented. The model can then be used as a guiding tool for the discussion afterwards, the participants could reflect on whether they acknowledge the tensions encountered by school-based supervisors in their specific contexts and discuss how these tensions could be addressed. Another interesting question to discuss in this international arena could be: what should change in teacher education for school-based supervising teachers to be identified as teacher educators, both from a collective and individual perspective? This presentation contributes to the conference theme by addressing the importance of teachers and teacher educators acknowledging and strengthening their teacher educator identities, especially in these changing, unstable times, as they are educating and influencing future generations of teachers with their own beliefs of what (good) teaching is.

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