Democratic Learning in Teacher Education: partnership supervision in the teaching practice

Abstract

In an earlier paper, the place of democratic approaches in teacher education was explored with reference to polytechnic‐based work with a group of students. This paper follows that same group into teaching practice where a variant of the Meighan‐Harber approach is adopted. Partnership supervision, as this variant is known, seems to offer an essentially student‐centred approach to the professional development of student teachers which is an interesting alternative to the more traditional tutor‐centred approach adopted by many institutions.