ABSTRACT
To contemplate the colloquy of student and supervisor in the eye of the camera is to contemplate one of the most complex of human encounters. Implicit in the discourse of supervisor and student teacher, and forming its conceptual core, is the problem of a pupil trying to learn something. But this is just the innermost of a set of Chinese boxes. In box number two is a student teacher trying to teach the pupil something. This student is trying to learn something with the aid of a supervisor. The supervisor is also trying to learn something: how best to help students to teach: box number three. But who teaches the supervisor? In places where this goes on it is usually presumptuous professors of education whose mentors are colleagues and other teachers and researchers and, in the best cases, the students they teach, the pupils the students teach and the supervisor’s colleagues. This is box number four. As may be inferred, the outer box is particularly dependent upon bootstrap activity.
