Informing supervision practice through research: A narrative inquiry

Abstract

Intention: This study focused on questions of whether and how clients benefit from supervision. As practitioner research, the study was intended to shape the researchers' own supervision practice. Method: The qualitative approach was based on interviews with a small number of experienced practitioners about their supervision experiences. The findings are presented in the form of reflexive stories, told by each researcher. Findings: In these stories the researchers tell how engagement with experienced practitioners' accounts of their past supervision shaped the hopes and intentions the researchers hold for their future supervision. Implications for practice: The stories suggest there are therapeutic benefits in an ethic of transparency that provides for practices that overtly carry stories in both directions between counselling and supervision.

Multicultural supervision: supervisees’ reflections on culturally competent supervision

“…Further, not only does time spent in processing cultural issues greatly enhance the supervision experience (Constantine, 1997) and increase self-perceived competency among supervisees (Constantine, 2001), gaining deeper insights has been noted to significantly influence client conceptualization (Gray, 2005). Moreover, Crocket et al (2009) suggest that the link between supervision and clinical practice is more about the practitioner's reflections and how supervision may inform the questions or discussions shared with clients rather than any particular outcome. Our findings clearly highlight that supervisor's interventions challenged our supervisees and encouraged them to explore alternative perspectives and ways of conceptualization.…”

Ethics and practices of re‐presentation: Witnessing self and other

“…Witnessing practices have also been used as an analytic strategy in group research projects (Crocket et al, 2007, 2009), where each student/researcher has written an outsider witness account in response to a research interview. A further example is Eugene Davis’ (2009) masters research of the process and effects of outsider witnessing practices with a group of men who discussed masculinity.…”

“…My argument in this paper is that this learning from practice applies in representation as well as in data generation. Speedy's (2004, 2008) interpellation of narrative research and therapy and my own experiences of transporting counselling‐derived practices into research (see Crocket, 2004; Crocket et al, 2007, 2009, for example) exemplify Cornforth's (2011) suggestion that ‘research extends counselling's strengths’ (p. 90). I propose that witnessing practices extend a counselling strength into research, by, for example, enacting responsible care and social justice, core values of counselling (New Zealand Association of Counsellors, 2002).…”