TPC Journal V7, Issue 3 - FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 3 273 Model (SSM) proposed in this article combines microskills training with supervision common factors to create a framework with which to enhance the development and training of supervisors. The SSM worksheet provides a consolidated and user-friendly tool to assist with the supervision of SITs (please contact the author for a copy of the worksheet). A Brief Background of Microskills The use of microskills as a training instrument was born from the world of education. Succinctly, microtraining uses a systematic format to teach individual helping skills and may utilize recordings of practice, step-by-step training, and self-observation (Ivey et al., 1968). Fortune, Cooper, and Allen (1967) simplified and codified teaching skills into a model they called micro-teaching , aiming to provide students with an introduction to the experience and practice of teaching. The model provided experienced teachers with a vehicle for training novice teachers and gave the research team more control to track training effects. When Ivey and colleagues (1968) introduced microskills within mental health care, they proposed the training of microcounseling , which focused on the specific behaviors of counseling skills, as useful in counselor education for the quick and effective teaching of counselor trainees. Ivey and colleagues’ adaptation of microskills to the mental health field allowed counselor preparation programs to move from nebulous training techniques to a more systematic approach, providing supervisors with a more delineated method to track trainees’ progress in actual skill behaviors. The structured method of tracking progress assists supervisors in the process of gatekeeping, making it easier to filter out candidates with difficulties or barriers to learning the core counseling skills (Lambie & Ascher, 2016). The concept of utilizing microskills in the process of training supervisors has been broached by other researchers. Richardson and Bradley (1984) combined microskills and supervision training to create a microsupervision model , which breaks down the supervision skill acquisition process to assessment, modeling, and transfer. These three stages suggest how an SIT’s supervisor identifies skill areas for growth, provides educative and corrective information to the SIT, and allows the SIT opportunities to integrate and display new skills. Russell-Chapin and Ivey (2004) utilized microskill design to develop the Microcounseling Supervision Model (MSM). The Counselling Interview Rater Form (CIRF) is a component of the MSM, which breaks down the counseling session into stages that are then comprised of specific skills to be assessed (Russell-Chapin & Ivey, 2004). The MSM is a useful tool to practice providing constructive feedback, because the CIRF “is mostly used as a method of providing positive, corrective, qualitative and quantitative feedback for supervisees” (Russell- Chapin & Ivey, 2004, p. 167). James, Milne, & Morse (2008) adapted microskills to the dialogue used by supervisors within a cognitive-behavioral supervisory approach. These models can be useful in the development of supervisors; however, there is a need for the creation of a supervision model that rises above current approaches, yet provides enough focus to be specific to clinical supervision (Morgan & Sprenkle, 2007). The proposed SSM acts to fill potential deficiencies by balancing focus between more detailed supervisory actions and a wider breadth of supervisory behaviors. The Progression of Supervision Models Clinical supervision is recognized in the mental health professions as the signature pedagogy (Barnett, Erickson Cornish, Goodyear, & Lichtenberg, 2007; Goodyear, Bunch, & Claiborn, 2006). Introducing students to the foundational skills within mental health care has been a practice of supervisors for over 40 years (Ridley et al., 2011). Different professions within mental health care vary in job function and purpose, but the skills, processes, and objectives of supervision remain somewhat uniform across disciplines and cultures (Bernard & Goodyear, 2014). Supervision as an intervention