The Practice of Supervision: A Sociocultural Perspective

Abstract

A sociocultural perspective for supervision practice uses the concepts of acculturation, apprenticeship, and reflective assessment to describe supervision in counselor education. Supervision can be viewed as a n intersubjective process that revolves around solving ambiguous and unstructured problems; key features include the coconstruction of shared meaning, framed by a continuous cycle of reflection and action, and the emergence of a professional identity. Implications for research and practice are offered.Supervision focuses on both knowledge and the process of counseling practice. I t has historically been conceptualized as a linear process based in a hierarchical relationship between a novice counselor -in-training and expert counselor, with a power differential between a supervisor and supervisee (Friedlander &Ward, 1984). Bernard and Goodyear (19981 offered the most common working definition of supervision as an intervention that is provided by a senior member of a profession to a junior member or members of that same profession. This relationship is evaluative, extends over time, and has the simultaneous purposes of enhancing the professional functioning of the junior member(s), and serving as a gatekeeper for those who are to enter the particular profession. (p. 4) A number of models have been used to study supervision in counselor education, and a body of research literature exists on which our thinking about supervision is based. For example, Stoltenberg (1981) offered the counselor complexity model (later revised as an integrated developmental model [IDM]; Stoltenberg, & Delworth, 19871, which integrated developmental constructs with supervision using "step-by-step approaches to task and conflict resolution . . . within an overall linear stage model" (p. 186).

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