Supervision Effects on Self-Efficacy, Competency, and Job Involvement of School Counsellors

Abstract

This research examined the effects of structured group supervision (SGS) on counsellors’ self-efficacy, counselling competency, and job involvement in Singapore. Twenty-one counsellors participated in six, 3-hour SGS sessions over 12 weeks with one qualified counselling supervisor. The counsellors had at least six months’ experience working as counsellors in schools or educational-related settings, such as student care centres. A single-group, before-after design was adopted. Pre- and posttest questionnaires were administered — Counselling Self-Efficacy Scale (CSES), Counsellor's Competence Self-Evaluation Scale (CCSS), and Job Involvement Scale (JIS) — to examine counsellor self-efficacy, counselling competency, and job involvement respectively. Paired-sample t tests were used to examine the impact of SGS on the three measures, whereas the Pearson correlation was used to examine the relationships among them. It was found that there was (a) a significant increase in mean scores for pre- and posttest scores for counsellor self-efficacy and counselling competency, but not for job involvement after SGS; and (b) a significant positive correlation among the three variables. With a better understanding of the SGS and the impact on counsellors, supervision practices can be improved and school counsellors can become more competent and confident.

School Counsellors’ Job Satisfaction: What is the Role of Counselling Self-Efficacy, Trait Anxiety and Cognitive Flexibility?

“…Failure to provide an effective mental health service for any reason will hinder the development of counsellors' self-efficacy beliefs and impair the self-confidence of school counsellors. On the other hand, gaining experience, especially undergoing supervision, strengthens the counselling self-efficacy beliefs of school counsellors and enables them to gain a more precise professional identity (DeKruyf et al, 2013, Tan & Chou, 2018. Besides, administrators may experience uncertainty about the role of school counsellors who do not consider themselves competent, and therefore they may not provide counselling services to students.…”

“…Counselling self-efficacy is defined as the beliefs of professionals in the mental health profession about their ability to manage a counselling session (Lent, Hill, & Hoffman, 2003). Although research on the counselling self-efficacy concept within the context of school mental health services is limited in number and fairly new (Ooi, Jaafar, & Baba, 2018;Schiele, Weist, Youngstrom, Stephan, & Lever, 2014;Tan & Chou, 2018), they provide important evidence. The counselling self-efficacy beliefs of school counsellors develop based on mastery experiences (Ooi et al, 2018).…”

“…Depending on current knowledge and level of training, school counsellors can assess their own efficacies, but getting feedback and/ or supervision from an experienced practitioner can enable them to build these beliefs on more objective or realistic foundations. Receiving supervision strengthens their counselling self-efficacy beliefs, helping them develop counselling skills and acquire a certain professional identity (DeKruyf et al, 2013, Tan & Chou, 2018. Otherwise, counselling self-efficacy beliefs may erode and eventually cause a loss of clinical skills.…”

Empowering tertiary level students to solve their own study-related problems to improve study performance

“…Counselor training as pointed out by JARHE 12,5 Campbell (2018) is widely based on the Person-or Client-Centered theory (Rogers, 1946). However, due to lack of efficacy, action research is being conducted on professional counselors themselves (Tan and Chou, 2018;Elizabeth et al, 2019) using methods such as Structured Peer Group Supervision (SPGS) in efforts to improve self-efficacy. In SPGS, the facilitator gives the questions/problems for a solution, to the group.…”

“…The university, however, does not employ a professional counselor. Peer counselling training, for example, SPGS is usually conducted based on problems provided by the program supervisor (Elizabeth et al, 2019;Tan and Chou, 2018); however, the proposed methodology proposes to empower the student by arranging for them to identify their own problems and subsequently to solving their own problems.…”