It provides the experiential foundation for the psychologist's knowledge, skills, and values to be consolidated and applied. As an integral facet of such experience, clinical supervision serves two essential and interrelated functions: to ensure the integrity of clinical services provided to the client and to develop competence in the supervisee. We define supervision as follows: Supervision is a distinct professional activity in which education and training aimed at developing science-informed practice are facilitated through a collaborative interpersonal process. It involves observation, evaluation, feedback, the facilitation of supervisee self-assessment, and the acquisition of knowledge and skills by instruction, modeling, and mutual problem solving. In addition, by building on the recognition of the strengths and talents of the supervisee, supervision encourages selfefficacy. Supervision ensures that clinical consultation is conducted in a competent manner in which ethical standards, legal prescriptions, and professional practices are used to promote and protect the welfare of the client, the profession, and society at large.

have noted the relevance of examining religious and spiritual issues as approached by the profession of psychology and, in particular, in respect to the practice of psychotherapy. This attention to religious and spiritual issues is based on an appreciation of the influential role religious beliefs, traditions and experiences serve in the lives of persons. Religious and spiritual dimensions are posited to be significant constituents of human experience and as such fall within the legitimate

Supervision is a domain of professional practice conducted by many psychologists but for which formal training and standards have been largely neglected. In this article, supervision is proposed as a core competency area in psychology for which a number of elements reflecting specific knowledge, skills, and values must be addressed to ensure adequate training and professional development of the trainee. Supra-ordinate factors of supervision viewed as permeating all aspects of professional development are proposed. These include the perspective that professional development is a lifelong, cumulative process requiring attention to diversity in all its forms, as well as legal and ethical issues, personal and professional factors, and self- and peer-assessment. A competencies framework is presented with particular elements representing knowledge (e.g., about psychotherapy, research, etc.), skills (including supervising modalities, relationship skills, etc.), values (e.g., responsibility for the clients and supervisee rests with supervisor, etc.), and meta-knowledge. Social contextual factors and issues of education and training, assessment, and future directions also are addressed, with specific elements listed. Suggestions for future work in this area are addressed, including the need to refine further and operationalize competences, develop clear expectations for accreditation and licensure regarding supervision competencies, and expand the description of developmental levels of supervisors from minimal to optimal competence. This is one of a series of articles published together in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology. Several other articles that resulted from the Competencies Conference: Future Directions in Education and Credentialing in Professional Psychology will appear in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice and The Counseling Psychologist.

We return in this closing chapter to the central question posed in the introduction: What is the influence of religion as a variable in mental health and psychological treatment? Broadly stated, the issue concerns the inclusion of religious issues in the clinical practice of psychology. Consideration of "inclusion" is crucial to this discussion because it defines the relationship between the science and profession of psychology and the domain of human experience referred to as religion. Furthermore, such a determination regarding inclusion establishes the parameters of treatment and standards of care, delimits the scope of legitimate psychological research and scholarship, and dictates the course of education and clinical training. It is our view that religious issues should be included within the clinical practice of psychology. We believe that this inclusion is justified in light of four interrelated factors: the professional ideal of cultural inclusion; the substantial evidence of religion as a cultural fact; the developing body of theoretical, clinical, and empirical research literature concerning religion as a variable in mental health; and the appreciation of psychological treatment as a value-based form of intervention. We conclude our discussion with an appraisal of current education and training respective of religious issues and suggest a model for training and future research.In positing that religion be included as a variable in psychological treatment, we are not issuing a universal statement regarding the positive 561

Providing competent clinical supervision is challenging for the practitioner both in determining supervisee competencies and in conducting the corresponding supervision. Competence, an ethical principle that informs the practice of psychology, refers to requisite knowledge, skills, and values for effective performance. Similar to other health care professions, psychology is increasingly moving towards competency-based approaches in education, training, and performance appraisal. In this article, the authors review perspectives on competence as a construct and define competency-based clinical supervision, with particular attention to the nature of ethical, legal, contextual, and practice issues that arise from the establishment of a standard of competency-based supervision practice. The authors conclude with a discussion of challenges faced in clinical supervision and recommendations for best practices.