Becoming a Counselling Supervisor in Canada: Key Elements from the Perspective of Supervisors
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Becoming a Counselling Supervisor in Canada: Key Elements from the Perspective of Supervisors Anne Thériault 1
& Nicola Gazzola
1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Becoming a counsellor supervisor is a professional choice that has been explored from an objective standpoint resulting in multidimensional understandings of the requirements and components of the role. Nevertheless, the experience of supervisors as they undertake this profession within a profession remains nebulous. Twelve Canadian supervisors were interviewed to garner an emic view of their experiences in the role. Using Braun and Clarke’s (2012) thematic analysis, a conceptual scheme that included six themes, each with subthemes, emerged that reflected the supervisors’ experiences of becoming supervisors: (a) qualifications for becoming a supervisor, (b) motivation/decision to become a supervisor, (c) ongoing development and growth subsequent to becoming a supervisor, (d) feelings about being a supervisor/phenomenological aspects, (e) supervisors’ perspectives on the key aspects involved in being a supervisor, and (f) wishlist: needs going forward. Implications for supervisor training and preparation for the role are discussed. Keywords Counsellor supervision . Supervisor development . Supervisor experiences
Introduction and Literature Review Becoming a clinical supervisor used to be a natural outgrowth of the acquisition of clinical experience. After a number of years of counselling practice, one was considered equipped to engage in the Bdistinct professional activity in which education and training aimed at developing science-informed practice is facilitated through a collaborative interpersonal process^ (Falender and Shafranske 2004, p. 3). Clinical experience was considered the sole prerequisite to guide the development of a junior member of the profession. The widely held assumption that counselling skills were directly transferable to the practice of supervision made this progression inevitable for most clinicians. Indeed, Bernard and Goodyear (2014) reported that
* Anne Thériault [email protected]
1
University of Ottawa, 145 Jean-Jacques Lussier, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada
Int J Adv Counselling
between 85 and 95% of counsellors who had 15 years or more of experience had been called upon to engage in supervisory activities. In terms of preparing for the role, traditionally, one became a supervisor simply by aging (Gazzola and Stefano 2016). A critical look at this simple equation (e.g., clinical experience equals supervisory capacity) brought forward compelling evidence that supervision practice requires more preparation than just clinical experience as a counsellor or experience as a supervisee (Watkins 2013). Currently, supervision is considered a specialty within a profession (Pack 2009; Scott et al. 2000). To wit, supervision has been presented in terms of a number of required competencies (Falender et al. 2004; Falender and Shafranske 2012) best practices (Borders 2014), di
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