An Introduction to Theories of Counselor Supervision

Developmental models of supervision: Is it development?

“…The psychiatric literature on supervision has referred to the resident’s clinical growth in terms of a learning experience (Barnat, 1974; Cohen & DeBetz, 1977; Fleming, 1953; Fleming & Benedek, 1964; Gaoni & Neumann, 1974; Schlessinger, 1966). In addition, the literature in counseling psychology has recently promoted the instructional mission and characteristics of the supervisory relationship (Abbey, Hunt, & Weiser, 1985; Friedlander & Ward, 1984; Goodyear et al, 1983; Hess, 1980; Holloway, 1982; Holloway & Wampold, 1983); thus there is conceptual and empirical support for a pedagogical understanding of the student’s clinical training. Knowledge in educational psychology regarding instructional strategies based on characteristics of the learning task, student’s level of skill acquisition, and student’s learning style all seem to have direct relevance to issues dealt with in the tutorial of supervision.…”

“…For 25 of those years the predominant approach has been the extrapolation of counseling theory to the supervisory experience. Supervision models have been identified traditionally by counseling nomenclature-for example, psychodynamic supervision, rational-emotive theory supervision, and behavioral supervision (Goodyear, Bradley, & Bartlett, 1983). The call for a new approach has come from researchers' and educators' recognition that a purely clinical model of training is inadequate in explaining the supervisory phenomenon (Hess, 1980;Holloway, 1984;Holloway & Hosford, 1983;Holloway & Wampold, 1983;Lambert, 1974Lambert, , 1980Littrell, Lee-Borden, & Lorenz, 1979;Loganbill, Hardy, & Delworth, 1982;Stoltenberg, 1981).…”