Creating a Safe Space for Educators with Clinical Supervision with Dr Louise Allen-Walker and Dan Williams

Teaching people to be teachers can feel like a bit of a head-spinner - it can get meta quite quickly! But teacher educators (in school or in university) are also part of a wider group of slightly unusual people who teach people to become public-service professionals like social workers, youth workers or police officers.

In all of these cases, these educators have moved from a professional role to a role teaching people to do that job. While our colleagues looking after students in their work placements still do their original job too, in the case of university-based educators, they have left their original job role entirely and are trying to carve out a new position - not quite a 'normal' university lecturer, but not a teacher/social worker/whatever any more, either.

We're delighted to be joined once again by Dr Louise Allen-Walker, together with Dan Williams who's making his podcast debut. They've been investigating clinical supervision - a supportive process which is a key part of many of these professions (but interestingly not teaching) - and asking whether it might be possible to create a 'safe space' for university-based educators to work out how they support students in university without treading all over all sorts of red lines and boundaries.

We think this is also an interesting one for school-based teacher educators to consider in terms of what shift in identity takes place once you move from teacher to mentor.

Thanks to Louise and Dan for joining us! We'll be back next time with more to get you thinking.

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Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 18th October 2024.