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The importance of field supervision of student teacher candidates is well-recognized. However, the role of the supervisor is often unarticulated and ambiguous, left to the field supervisor and the candidate to delineate and define. The individual practices of field supervisors are often idiosyncratic representations of the goals of the specific teacher preparation program, or simply based on personal knowledge and experience. What are those supervisory practices, and are there differences based on the supervisors’ professional backgrounds? Based on survey responses from field supervisors at one university, this qualitative investigation suggests supervisors’ professional backgrounds and affiliations with teacher preparation programs do influence how supervisors assist new teachers develop as professionals. Former teachers tend to focus on practical and concrete aspects of teaching while university faculty and former teacher-administrators strive to connect classroom teaching to state mandates and teacher preparation program-identified curricular concerns. Field supervisors represent teacher preparation programs in schools and classrooms, but teacher preparation program faculty may not be fully aware of how they are being represented and what lessons supervisors are sharing with candidates and cooperating teachers. Student Teacher Field Supervisors Articulate Their Role University field supervisors help student teachers mediate theory and practice, yet little is known about how supervisors themselves make this connection, and it is clear that their ideologies vary greatly and may lack congruence with the teacher education program. Such variance complicates efforts to establish any causal relationship between teacher preparation programs and candidate success once certified. This is an ongoing study of the interactions among candidates, supervisors, and cooperating teachers and how these interactions align with goals and assumptions of policy makers and faculty regarding what “highly qualified” teachers know and do. There is a need for reliable instruments to collect data and find correlations between candidate preparation and student teaching performance. There are many assumptions about the role of the supervisor yet these assumptions are neither consistent within the literature nor are they based upon a broad understanding of how supervisors themselves interpret their responsibilities. According to the National Research Council (2010), the primary reason for field supervision is to ensure that student teachers apply the knowledge they have learned from their university preparation to classrooms in which they are placed. For example, the teacher preparation program itself may expect supervisors to encourage reflective practice and offer critique and feedback in regard to student teachers’ practices while creating a supportive environment for the student teacher (Bates, Ramirez, & Drits, 2009). Alternately, the standards-based rigor of many evaluation tools is having an impact on the degree to which supervisors are able to draw from the “teachable moments” within 1 Byers-Kirsch and Jeffery Petersen: Student Teacher Field Supervisors Articulate Their Roles Published by PDXScholar, 2012 SPRING 2012 125 classrooms. The often narrow restrictions of many standards-based checklists force supervisors to evaluate teaching using defined criteria in ways that reinforce the notion of teaching as the culmination of a set of patterns and responses. This view has limited the teaching and modeling of the process that we value for our teacher candidates, which involves paying attention to the students as individual learners with unique views, learning needs, and perspectives on the world, and helping our teacher candidates to become critical thinkers with a multicultural awareness (Bates & Burbank, 2008). Student teachers prioritize practical, hands-on knowledge they gain from the classroom experiences and their cooperating teacher, as well as the support they receive from their supervisor, while minimizing ways in which understanding gained from educational theory increases the depth of their classroom practice (Caires & Almeida, 2007). In addition, many cooperating K-12 teachers dismiss the value of a strong theoretical background (Fernandez & Erbilgin, 2009), which supports candidates’ inability in some cases to analyze and solve complex situations. The field supervisor is challenged with balancing the requirements of the teacher preparation program and the priorities of candidates and K-12 classrooms. University-based teacher preparation programs rely on supervisors to mentor student teachers as they synthesize the theoretical and philosophical bases of educational practice and pedagogy with the realities of classroom structures and school, district, state, and federal mandates. As a result, the role of the supervisor becomes even more crucial to teacher development. By surveying and interviewing field supervisors regarding their habits and logic for any actions related to the student teaching placement, the researchers see correlations between their approach and their professional experience, as well as some connections to the goals and philosophy of the teacher preparation program. The researchers in this study surveyed the field supervisors at a comprehensive university of 10,000 students to discover: 1) how supervisors interpret their roles; 2) how supervisors enact their responsibilities; 3) how supervisors understand and align their practices with the program mandates; and, 4) how supervisors assess and evaluate their own performance. The data collected will contribute to improving their Teacher Certification Program (TCP) design and alignment, and provide valuable insight into determining an effective supervision model. Although there is occasional mention of supervisors’ affiliation with the university (National Research Council, 2010), there is minimal discussion of other relationships. When collaboration is discussed, the focus is on the candidate or cooperating teacher and not on the teaching program (Bates, et al., 2009). Therefore, the alignment of supervision with preparation program content is unlikely because supervisors rarely participate in meaningful professional development activities, instead relying upon personal experience and generally focusing on documentation procedures and administrative deadlines. In addition, little is known about supervisors’ education and professional expertise or their mentoring ability (National Research Council, 2010). An inquiry into their actual practice will contribute to the dearth of literature and perhaps a greater integration of supervisors into the teacher preparation program.