The Bigger Picture: Supervision as an Educational Framework for All Fields

Abstract

Supervision is a key aspect of learning/teaching; the authors discuss educational perspectives and the place of supervision in training and continuing professional development. The nature of supervision as a significant experiential learning process for both parties is explored and diagrammed. Some differing approaches are considered as part of a metaperspective that includes the various functions of supervision. A cocreative viewpoint and methodology are presented together with several new models that conceptualize the process and practice of supervision as an example of mutual experiential learning. As well as providing models for supervision in the educational and organizational fields, the authors argue that all supervision is primarily educational.

Cocreative Counseling

“…In the 18 articles reviewed, cocreativity and cocreation were defined and referenced in various ways. These included references to comprehension as a cocreative process (Lindén, ); the cocreative function of the play (of psychoanalysis; Rose, ); the idea that meaning making is cocreative and interactive (Harrison & Tronick, ); praxis as “a process of cocreative, meaning‐making reflection” (Barrow, , p. 35), which, the same author argued, offers a “cocreative research methodology” (p. 39); and supervision as a cocreative process (Newton & Napper, ). Cocreation was viewed as fundamental to who we are as human beings—for instance, Salters () cited Graves () as considering cocreation to be intrinsic to who we are as biopsychosocial beings, evolving in a cocreative interaction between our biological capacities and drives and our experienced reality, and, as discussed below, fundamental in defining the nature of therapy.…”

“…This acknowledges the mutual influence of the therapist and client on each other in coconstructing their particular communicative home with its own language and metaphors; and, as Campos () expressed it: Cure is finding the right metaphor. In their work as educators, Newton and Napper () extended this concept to supervision, which they viewed as a cocreative process that emphasizes mutual development, explaining that “in this process, both the supervisor and the supervisee are learning; together they are creating new knowledge and information through discourse and through their relationship” (p. 152).…”

Effects of a Transactional Analysis Program on Adolescents’ Emotion Regulation

“…Veiga (2004) and Emmerton and Newton (2004) stated that TA can be applied for the people with no clinical background. There are some studies that are devoted to the examination of TA in education (Barrow, 2007;Bastianelli, 2014;Hay & Widén, 2015;McKimm & Forrest, 2010;Morris, 2006;Newton & Napper, 2007;Shotton, 2009;Stuart & Alger, 2011). Helping students promote control over their actions, thoughts, and feelings and also acting more as an adult are important goals of transactional analysis in education (York, 2015;Veiga, 2004).…”

A Life Yet to Be Found

“…Not knowing whether she would turn up for the following session but being committed to the waiting was, I would argue, crucial at this stage: She was about to fall into life again, and this time she needed some structure to land on. My ethical job was to confront my own sense of hopelessness and uncertainty as well as to remain solidly engaged with the clinical task (Poland, 2006), something that became possible by making use of the management and support functions of continuous supervision (Newton & Napper, 2007).…”