The Supervisory Practices in a Special Education Department's Teaching Practice Programme: The Perspectives of Student Teachers

The purpose of this current study is to make a contribution to the literature by investigating university tutors' (UT) and cooperating teachers' (CT) practices in one special education department's teaching practice programme in Turkey from the student teachers' (ST) perspective. The relations between the programme participants with a phenomenological research design were analysed in order to determine how the programme works, and possibly make suggestions for improving it. Therefore, the following research question was addressed: How do STs perceive the UTs' and CTs' practices within a special education department's teaching practice programme? Fourteen STs in a teaching practice programme were interviewed in the 2016-2017 academic year. The data were analysed using thematic analysis, and four contexts were created for better clarification: professional, partnership, material, and personal contexts. Results indicated that UTs', CTs' and STs' practices, and ST's standpoints in the programme need to be handled by considering participants' collective level of agency and each one's professional agency based on relational agency.