Supervising Clinical Fellows: Preparation and Styles

Abstract

Purpose: The majority of supervision literature has focused on the supervision of graduate students. The purpose of this study was to examine the preparation of and explore the thinking styles of mentoring speech-language pathologists (SLPs) of Speech-Language Pathology graduates who are completing their clinical fellowship. Method: A questionnaire was sent to 1626 SLPs by email who reported working in school settings and 102 participants responded. They were asked questions about demographics, caseloads, supervisory experiences, knowledge of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA, 2008) standards for supervision, and thinking styles. Forty of the participants reported on the number of years of experience they had with supervision and reported mentoring a clinical fellow in the past 3 years. These 40 participants were divided into two groups: mentoring SLPs with less experience (LEM; 1–5 years) and mentoring SLPs with more experience (MEM; 6 or more years). Results: The LEM and MEM groups demonstrated different patterns in meeting and contacting their Clinical Fellows (CF) and in participating in training activities for mentoring SLPs. There were also differences in the thinking styles of the groups. The MEM group rated themselves as having preferences for tasks that allowed them to work on one thing at a time as well as tasks that had a more global focus more than those in the LEM group. Conclusions: Differences in thinking styles may affect the style of supervision and mentoring. These relationships warrant further examination.