Cooperating teachers' awareness of their roles and their opinions about the effectiveness of the INSET on their supervisory skills

The quality of education depends on the quality of teachers educating the generations. Therefore, teacher training activities both for pre-service teachers (PRESET) and in-service teachers (INSET) are undeniably valuable for their professional development. Acting as a gate to profession, the course 'teaching practice' stands as a PRESET where student teachers (STs) collaborate with more competent and experienced in-service teachers, defined as cooperating teachers (CTs). As success of 'teaching practice' is directly attributed to the quality of CTs, their training gains extra importance. In this sense, the Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE) organizes INSET programs in cooperation with General Directorate of Teacher Training to prepare teachers for their CT roles. Introducing Clinical Supervision Model (CSM), the INSETs aim to empower CTs with several supervisory techniques to support STs during this process more effectively. The present study aims to investigate both the effectiveness of the INSET in providing these skills to CTs and the usability of CSM in practice. Designed as a mixed method research, the data of the study was collected from 120 teachers of English for the questionnaires and 6 teachers of English for the personal interviews. Both the quantitative and qualitative data indicate that Clinical Supervision Model is effective and usable in practice as it empowers CTs with several supervisory techniques especially to observe and give feedback and the INSET has been successful in providing these techniques. However, participants of the interviews criticize the INSET for lacking follow up support and activities as they feel the need for more practice of these techniques. Therefore, observation and reflective sessions within school-based study groups of CTs are suggested as a follow up activity after the program. Additionally, some adjustments are proposed for the timing of INSET and evaluation process on MEBBIS in order to improve the effectiveness of the program. Keywords. Clinical Supervision Model, cooperating teacher, cooperating teacher's responsibilities, perceptions of cooperating teachers, scale development