Identifying supervisor competencies during teaching practice in preschool education

A teacher is one of the building blocks of education. For this reason, the importance of training teachers has been increasingly recognized from the past to the present. As the importance of teacher training was recognized, it became clear how important the teaching practice course at the university is. There are many factors for the teaching practice lesson to be efficient; one is the supervisor. Therefore, in this study, it was tried to determine the supervisor's qualifications in the teaching practice course in the pre-school teaching program in education faculties. The qualitative research method was used in this study, which aims to determine the supervisor's competencies in teaching practice course with different perspectives and experiences, and phenomenology design was chosen as the research design. The study group was determined by the criterion sampling method. The study group consists of academic staff who worked in the Preschool Department of Hacettepe University and Bursa Uludağ University and have taught Pre-School teaching practice in the last four years. The interview form developed by the researcher was used as the data acquisition tool. During the data analysis, the opinions of the academic staff participating in the research were put in a written form in a computer environment. In the light of the opinions revealed, it was divided into themes, and the codes were determined and tabulated. As a result of the research, the supervisor's qualifications are revealed as the supervisor should be graduated from the department where he/she will enter the teaching practice course. His / her expertise should be in this field. He/she should know the field-specific method and pre-school program. Communication with prospective teachers should be frequent and supportive, motivation-enhancing, and cooperation with the application teachers. The communication should be frequent and supportive of the teacher candidate, and the number of teacher candidates per teaching staff should be limited to four people. The teacher candidates should definitely be observed. The teaching staff should also pay attention to their personal development, and they could participate in discussions and workshops about the teaching practice course. Keywords: Teaching Practice, supervisor Preschool Education