Supervision is Not Politically Innocent

Abstract

This paper argues that the potential tensions within the role, function, and purpose of supervision, potentially magnified by the adoption of the process within a variety of organisational and occupational settings, underscore the importance of supervision being seen as a contextually informed activity. Supervision can be constructed as a professional development activity with processes of reflection that are potentially active contributors to practitioner resilience. It can also be viewed as a developmental tool that assists a worker adapt to the workplace context and to process environmentally located challenges and tensions. Within some workplaces, supervision has an active managerial and risk-management function. Using the lens of resilience theories, this paper addresses key issues for supervision emerging from its different functions and argues that in becoming aware of its contextual location in complex practice and organisational environments, supervision practice itself cannot remain politically innocent.