Supervisory Interactions Research Articles

Supervision as a Dispersed Practice: Exploring the Creation of Supervisory Spaces in Day‐to‐Day Social Work Practice

ABSTRACTSupervision is integral to social work practice; however, how it operates in day‐to‐day practice remains poorly understood. Existing research mainly comprises quantitative and qualitative accounts of social workers' and supervisors' experiences of supervision. More recently, a small number of studies examining the content of supervision have added to our understanding of what happens in supervision. However, supervisory interactions outside formal supervision have received scant empirical attention. This paper draws on an ethnographic study of four social work teams in England, exploring how formal and informal case discussion supports social workers' sensemaking. Data comprised observations of case talk in the office space (n = 21) and group case discussions (n = 2), recordings of one‐to‐one supervision (n = 17) and semi‐structured interviews (n = 22). Findings highlighted the importance of space in how social workers perceived and engaged with supervision. Supervisory spaces involve the interaction of physical, thinking and emotional spaces to create spaces that are supportive, task‐focused and reflective. Moreover, these supervisory spaces are not confined to formal one‐to‐one supervision or to the dyadic supervisor–supervisee relationship. This raises questions for how child protection social workers can be best supported, across diverse supervisory spaces and relationships, to ensure their practice is effective.

The ways to avoid abusive supervision: the moderating effects of the characteristics of supervisors and subordinates on abusive supervision

ABSTRACT Following the recent emphasis on supervisory interactions in abusive supervision, this study explains why and how supervisors’ job insecurity and authoritarianism are related to abusive supervision and how subordinates’ characteristics, agreeableness and negotiating resistance interact with the effects of supervisors’ characteristics. We conducted a field study with 261 supervisor and subordinate dyads in South Korea, and the study findings confirmed that supervisors’ authoritarianism is positively related to abusive supervision and that the effect is enhanced when subordinates are highly agreeable and display resistant behaviors. The study contributes to the leadership literature, particularly on abusive supervision and personality. Moreover, our findings have practical implications for employees to manage their work relationships with their supervisors or subordinates.

Analysing 3429 digital supervisory interactions between Community Health Workers in Uganda and Kenya: the development, testing and validation of an open access predictive machine learning web app

BackgroundDespite the growth in mobile technologies (mHealth) to support Community Health Worker (CHW) supervision, the nature of mHealth-facilitated supervision remains underexplored. One strategy to support supervision at scale could be artificial intelligence (AI) modalities, including machine learning. We developed an open access, machine learning web application (CHWsupervisor) to predictively code instant messages exchanged between CHWs based on supervisory interaction codes. We document the development and validation of the web app and report its predictive accuracy.MethodsCHWsupervisor was developed using 2187 instant messages exchanged between CHWs and their supervisors in Uganda. The app was then validated on 1242 instant messages from a separate digital CHW supervisory network in Kenya. All messages from the training and validation data sets were manually coded by two independent human coders. The predictive performance of CHWsupervisor was determined by comparing the primary supervisory codes assigned by the web app, against those assigned by the human coders and calculating observed percentage agreement and Cohen’s kappa coefficients.ResultsHuman inter-coder reliability for the primary supervisory category of messages across the training and validation datasets was ‘substantial’ to ‘almost perfect’, as suggested by observed percentage agreements of 88–95% and Cohen’s kappa values of 0.7–0.91. In comparison to the human coders, the predictive accuracy of the CHWsupervisor web app was ‘moderate’, suggested by observed percentage agreements of 73–78% and Cohen’s kappa values of 0.51–0.56.ConclusionsAugmenting human coding is challenging because of the complexity of supervisory exchanges, which often require nuanced interpretation. A realistic understanding of the potential of machine learning approaches should be kept in mind by practitioners, as although they hold promise, supportive supervision still requires a level of human expertise. Scaling-up digital CHW supervision may therefore prove challenging.Trial registration: This was not a clinical trial and was therefore not registered as such.

Responding to Supervisory Feedback: Mediated Positioning in Thesis Writing

The process of responding to supervisory feedback requires student writers to position themselves toward both the provider and content of that feedback, indicating their stance in the interaction and their evolving disciplinary competence. How positionings are discursively shaped, developed, and enacted to influence thesis revisions, however, has been relatively unexplored. In this article, we trace how two master’s students construct their positions in supervisory interactions and in the subsequent revisions of their literature review drafts. Through discourse and intertextual analyses, we propose three dimensions of interpersonal positioning ( cooperative, self-assertive, explorative) that are co-constructed to reinforce local supervisory cooperation and modify conceptualizations of the research work. We highlight scaffolded, responsive, and reflexive types as concrete expressions of mediated positioning which help regulate the ways students orientate to their writing and their discipline.

Supervisors’ Perceptions of Postgraduate Students’ Thesis Literature Review Writing in a Ghanaian University

A key rhetorical unit in the thesis, the literature review has in recent times received some interest by specialists and researchers of English for Academic Purposes, academic literacy, discourse analysis, and assessment. The present study reports the perceptions of graduate supervisors regarding students’ engagement with thesis literature review writing, focusing on students’ challenges and strategies faced and adopted respectively. Semi-structured interviews were administered to nine (three each) supervisors from three Humanities departments from one public Ghanaian university. The results showed, first, supervisors’ awareness of thesis literature review writing as pivotal and, second, challenges such as reading and comprehension of texts, exercising criticality, synthesizing, referencing, and language use. Further, supervisors identified graduate students’ key coping strategies such as summarizing, paraphrasing, patchwriting, concept mapping, and guidelines from supervisory interactions. These findings have implications for the scholarship on supervisors’ perceptions concerning postgraduate students’ literature review writing in a region least featured in the literature as well as postgraduate pedagogy and further research.

Getting good help: a guide for reflection, debriefing and feedback conversations about in-consultation supervision

ABSTRACT Timely supervisor input to the care of their trainees’ patients plays a key role in ensuring the safety of patients under the care of general practice trainees. Supervisor responses to trainee calls for assistance are also important for trainee learning and professional identity formation. The in-consultation supervisory encounter in general practice training is, however, a complex social space with multiple trainee, supervisor and patient agendas. Trainee requests for assistance during their consultations are known to present general practitioner supervisors with a number of challenges. From the trainee’s perspective, a safe learning environment is essential during these supervisory interactions. A number of factors may act as barriers to, or reduce the usefulness of, in-consultation assistance in particular, resulting in trainees being less likely to seek such assistance on future occasions. It is therefore important to improve both trainee and supervisor skills in safe, effective and efficient in-consultation supervision. Making time for trainee and supervisor conversations about their help-seeking and help provision may uncover opportunities for improving skills, aligning agendas and enhancing outcomes. Finding time for debriefing, reflection and effective feedback conversations may be challenging, however, and opportunities for trainees to provide feedback to their supervisors are known to be particularly limited. We introduce a Debriefing, Reflection and Feedback Guide which is designed to prompt reflection, and structure effective and efficient debriefing and reciprocal feedback conversations. We outline the evidence which informed the development of the Guides, and present some preliminary findings from a pilot in Australian general practice training.

Make it Work! Teaching Law Students to Get Great Supervision (Even When Supervisors Aren't That Great)

In an ideal world every single meeting between law students and professors, or between beginning lawyers and their supervisors, should leave supervisors impressed by their charges and junior lawyers/students with a clear sense of direction for their work. We do not live in that ideal world. This Article seeks to improve those supervisory meetings, and to do so from the perspective of the ones under supervision. We posit there is a genuine art to getting the best supervision possible, and that doing so can be both learned and taught. We first unpack some of the disconnects and hidden assumptions that can hinder effective supervisory meetings. We observe that participants in supervisory meetings may have very different expectations about the roles of the participants. We further explore the relational aspects of supervision and note that a shared sense of responsibility for supervision promotes more effective supervisory interactions. Next, the Article turns to considering what law professors can do to prepare law students to get the most out of feedback from their supervisors. We conclude that teaching law students to adjust their attributions toward growth, to set clear and achievable goals, and to be thoughtfully self-reflective, will maximize their learning in any academic and professional supervision.

Emotion regulation in supervisory interactions and marital well-being: A spillover-crossover perspective.

When interacting with supervisors, employees often engage in emotion regulation (i.e., surface acting and deep acting), and the consequences may extend beyond work boundaries. Based on the spillover-crossover model and the strength model of self-control, we examined the relationship between employee emotion regulation during supervisory interactions and marital well-being (i.e., spouse's perceived marriage quality and satisfaction). Two survey studies using Chinese employee-spouse dyads showed that employees' surface acting was positively related to ego depletion. Surface acting was found to be negatively related to spouses' perceived marital well-being through the serial mediating roles of both ego depletion and social undermining behavior. Moreover, leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship quality moderated the association between surface acting and ego depletion such that the relationship was weaker for employees with a high-quality LMX relationship compared with those with a low-quality LMX relationship. These findings extend theory and research on emotion regulation to employee-leader interactions and contribute to future research and theory-building on emotion regulation, leadership, and work-family integration. Practical implications for leaders, organizations, and employees were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Work-Related Communication Barriers for Individuals with Autism: A Pilot Qualitative Study

This study identified situations where communication was a barrier to employment for adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Informant interviewees were six college graduates with ASD who have been employed for one year. Following the qualitative inductive analysis, five communication-related themes emerged: (1) job interviewing success, (2) negotiating co-worker interactions, (3) supervisory interactions, instruction, and feedback, (4) handling customer intercommunication, and (5) communication-oriented coping strategies. Participants were relatively more successful in communication coping strategies and supervisory interaction compared to difficulties with job interviewing and co-worker interactions. Vocational rehabilitation counsellors assisting clients with ASD should prioritize job interview communication skills and social skill education specific to appropriate interactions with co-workers and supervisors utilizing role play, social skill training, and job coaching.

Unravelling residents' and supervisors' workplace interactions: an intersubjectivity study.

Successful engagement between residents and supervisors lies at the core of workplace learning, a process that is not exempt from challenge. Clinical encounters have unique learning potential as they offer opportunities to achieve a shared understanding between the resident and supervisor of how to accomplish a common goal. How residents and supervisors develop such a mutual understanding is an issue that has received limited attention in the literature. We used the 'intersubjectivity' concept as a novel conceptual framework to analyse this issue. We conducted a constructivist grounded theory study in an anaesthesiology department in Bogota, Colombia, using focus groups and field observations. Eleven residents of different training levels and 18 supervisors with varying years of teaching experience participated in the study. Through iterative data analysis, collection and constant comparison, we constructed the final results. We found that residents and supervisors achieved a shared understanding by adapting to one another in the process of providing patient care. Continuous changes in the composition of resident-supervisor dyads exposed them to many procedural variations, to which they responded by engaging in various adaptation patterns that included compliance by residents with supervisors' directions, negotiation by residents of supervisors' preferences, and the sharing of decision making. In the process, the resident played an increasingly key role as a member of the supervisory dyad. Additionally, experiencing these adaptation patterns repeatedly resulted in the creation of a working repertoire: an attuned working code used by the members of each supervisory dyad to work together as a team. The development of shared understanding between residents and supervisors entailed experiencing diverse adaptation patterns which resulted in the creation of working repertoires. Seeing supervisory interactions as adaptation processes has essential theoretical and practical implications regarding workplace learning in postgraduate settings. Our findings call for further exploration to understand learning in postgraduate education as a social process.

The rush to judgement: Mapping moral geographies of the primary school playground

This article is informed by two studies in Australian primary school playgrounds and provides a critique of the interaction between adults and children during recess breaks in the school day. The study investigates the contours/lines of force that shape the moral geographies of playgrounds through management and supervision strategies. This scholarly discussion is underpinned by categories, including play that is risky, unhygienic, worthwhile, an obsession, violent/aggressive and good. It is argued that supervising teachers in the primary school playground can often rush to judge the play that they observe. Although mostly well intentioned, such types of play can often negatively impact adult agendas and biases. At an individual school level, critical engagement with the points raised in this article provides an opportunity for schools to reflect on primary school playground strategies and practices that they implement. Improving understanding of the moral geographies within primary school playgrounds can raise awareness in schools of the implications of supervisory interactions and judgement on the health and wellbeing of pupils.

What happens at work stays at work? Workplace supervisory social interactions and blood pressure outcomes.

We investigated the relationship between workplace supervisory social interactions and blood pressure outcomes using hourly diary entries and ambulatory blood pressure data from an experience sampling study of 55 long-term care employees. After accounting for relevant cardiovascular controls, significant effects of supervisory interactions on cardiovascular reactivity and recovery were found. Multilevel analyses revealed that negatively perceived supervisory interactions predicted higher systolic blood pressure at work (B = -1.59, p < .05, N observations = 422). Using time-lagged hierarchical regression analyses, the average perceived valence of supervisory interactions at work predicted average systolic blood pressure recovery after work (B = -14.52, p < .05, N = 33). Specifically, negatively perceived supervisory interactions at work predicted poorer cardiovascular recovery after work. Suggestions for improving practices in organizations and in experience sampling research are discussed.

From the President: Clinical Supervision: Back to the Future

“Speech-language pathologists and audiologists have been involved in supervision since the beginning of the profession. Indeed, supervision seems to have been the one component that has affected ev...

Dialectical Tensions Supervisor Attitudes and Contextual Influences in Psychotherapy Supervision

Psychotherapy supervision is a complex process; supervisors must concurrently balance multiple roles, such as teacher, counselor and consultant. The current paper proposes four “dialectical tensions” inherent in supervision which, if attended to, can guide supervisor behavior during the supervision session. Specifically, supervision requires balancing the following polarities: (1) promote change/provide support, (2) provide feedback/maintain relationship, (3) supervisee-directed/supervisor-directed, and (4) client focus/supervisee development focus. We discuss these dialectical tensions in a contextual framework, and we propose that supervisor awareness, intention and willingness are necessary to incorporate contextual factors and balance the dialectical tensions during supervisory interactions. We present two examples of supervisory interactions and describe how attention to the dialectical tensions can guide supervisory decisions.

We Can Work It Out: Student-Initiated Strategies to Facilitate Cross-Generational Supervisory Interactions.

Unique challenges associated with cross-generational supervision have been a “hot topic” in clinical education. A major focus of this discussion is increasing supervisor awareness of cross-generati...

Developing psychotherapists’ competence through clinical supervision: protocol for a qualitative study of supervisory dyads

BackgroundMental health professionals face unique demands and stressors in their work, resulting in high rates of burnout and distress. Clinical supervision is a widely adopted and valued mechanism of professional support, development, and accountability, despite the very limited evidence of specific impacts on therapist or client outcomes. The current study aims to address this by exploring how psychotherapists develop competence through clinical supervision and what impact this has on the supervisees’ practice and their clients’ outcomes. This paper provides a rationale for the study and describes the protocol for an in-depth qualitative study of supervisory dyads, highlighting how it addresses gaps in the literature.Methods/DesignThe study of 16–20 supervisor-supervisee dyads uses a qualitative mixed method design, with two phases. In phase one, supervisors who are nominated as expert by their peers are interviewed about their supervision practice. In phase two, supervisors record a supervision session with a consenting supervisee; interpersonal process recall interviews are conducted separately with supervisor and supervisee to reflect in depth on the teaching and learning processes occurring. All interviews will be transcribed, coded and analysed to identify the processes that build competence, using a modified form of Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) strategies. Using a theory-building case study method, data from both phases of the study will be integrated to develop a model describing the processes that build competence and support wellbeing in practising psychotherapists, reflecting the accumulated wisdom of the expert supervisors.DiscussionThe study addresses past study limitations by examining expert supervisors and their supervisory interactions, by reflecting on actual supervision sessions, and by using dyadic analysis of the supervisory pairs. The study findings will inform the development of future supervision training and practice and identify fruitful avenues for future research.

Therapist Responsiveness: Mirrored in Supervisor Responsiveness

One explanation for the repeated finding of similar client outcomes across therapy approaches is that successful therapists shift their style to be responsive to clients’ emerging needs. Following this reasoning, the primary educational function of supervision is to teach entry-level therapists to be maximally attuned and responsive to clients. Theorists have yet to elucidate how novice therapists learn to behave responsively to clients, however. This article introduces the concept of supervisor responsiveness, defined as accurate attunement and adaptation to a supervisee's emerging needs for knowledge, skills, and (inter)personal awareness with respect to the needs of the client(s) with whom he or she is working. Elaboration of the concept is provided with several case examples and a discussion of how responsiveness to clients is taught explicitly in supervision and mirrored in responsive supervisory interactions. The article concludes with practical implications as well as recommendations for future theorizing and research on supervisor responsiveness.

The supervision of professional doctorates: Experiences of the processes and ways forward

The doctoral research terrain is changing, as new-styles, for example professional doctorates, are being developed (Park, C., 2005. New variant PhDL the changing nature of the doctorate in the UK. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 27(2), 189-207). There is a scarcity of literature aimed at supervisors (Gatfield, T., 2005, An investigation into PhD supervisory management styles: development of a dynamic conceptual model and its managerial implications. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 27(3), 311-325) and this is particularly so in relation to professional doctorates. In this position paper we argue that the supervisory approach required for a professional doctorate student is different than that required for a PhD. Professional doctorate students, like PhD students, are required to make an explicit contribution to knowledge. Their emphasis, however, needs to be in producing knowledge that is theoretically sound, original, and of relevance to their practice area. This is of increasing importance within healthcare with the growing emphasis on patient driven translational research. As such, the students and their supervisors face unique challenges of balancing academic requirements with praxis. We suggest this requires specific tools to make explicit the dialogical relationship between a particular project and the cultural, social, educational and political aspects of its environment. We expose the potential of soft systems methodology as a means to highlight the emergent aspects of a doctoral practice development project, their respective and evolving supervisory interactions. This focus of this paper is therefore not about guiding supervision in a managerial sense, but rather at offering methodological suggestions that could underpin applied research at doctoral level.

Towards a conceptual framework for preceptorship in the clinical education of undergraduate nursing students

A recent study undertaken by the authors (2007) highlighted that undergraduate nursing students were subjected to varying experiences in clinical practice, which were mediated by a number of factors. Mediating factors included continuity of preceptors, student attitudes, the clinical setting environment, student and preceptor expectations of the clinical practice experience and interactions between the student and preceptor. Of note, interactions with preceptors were seen to ‘make or break’ the practical experience. Therefore, the relationship that is forged between preceptor and student is vital in shaping the student’s experience of the clinical area and of the real world of nursing work. Early positive socialisation experiences have been shown to improve retention rates of new nurses (Greene & Puetzer 2002), which are issues of prime concern in an era of worsening nursing shortages at all levels of the profession. A conceptual framework designed to guide preceptorship may help alleviate some of the difficulties experienced by undergraduate nurses in building relationships within the complex interactions of the nursing environment. The framework proposed in this paper offers a conceptual model that links positive preceptor leadership qualities (such as compassion, care and empathy) with student characteristics. This model proposes that synergistic interactions between nursing students and preceptors results in positive implications for the nursing workforce. This framework also has the potential for further development to fill the void created by a lack of conceptual guidance for supervisory interactions within the undergraduate clinical context.

Managing criticism in Ph.D. supervision: a qualitative case study

This article is part of a larger study which presents findings from an in‐depth longitudinal case study of a student’s Ph.D. journey. It shows how criticism is produced and managed in the supervisory relationship. As well as an overview of types of criticism produced across a range of supervisory interactions, the article presents a micro‐analysis of two recorded interactions between a supervisor and a Ph.D. student. Moments of interactional difficulty, disagreement and the strategic abandonment of conflict‐producing dialogue are described. Through the strategies of foreshadowing, advice‐giving, repair, humour and politeness, a symbiotic and cordial relationship is collaboratively developed and sustained. The effective management of criticism is a joint activity that underlies the capacity for supervision to be educationally effective. The findings of this study will contribute to the development of training programmes in supervisory skills in higher education, as well as advising students on how to get the most out of supervisors.