TPC Journal-Vol 11-Issue-1

The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 1 3 Counseling Practicum Supervisee Roles Novice supervisees (i.e., practicum supervisees) desire to quickly acquire skills so that they can best serve their clients by utilizing the “correct” counseling technique or approach (Stoltenberg & McNeill, 2010). Further, supervisees experience a high degree of anxiety and confusion as they begin to develop their own counseling style and competencies (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003). Relatedly, Loganbill et al. (1982) suggested that novice supervisees, like counseling practicum supervisees, regularly feel “stuck” in their work with clients and confused as to how best to make progress with their clients. To that end, supervisees benefit from instructors who provide supportive feedback and explicit instructions in a highly structured supervision environment (Ellis et al., 2015; Loganbill et al., 1982; Stoltenberg & McNeill, 2010) that promotes role clarity (i.e., clearly understanding what is expected and how to meet those expectations). Failure to determine whether there is alignment between supervisees’ and instructors’ perspectives on roles may yield unintended but potentially detrimental consequences (Stark, 2017). For example, from an educational perspective, instructors can best attend to their students’ learning needs when they understand what it is that their students perceive as being important to their learning (Moate et al., 2017). Furthermore, asking supervisees to engage in evaluations of their performance based on poorly understood roles (Ladany & Friedlander, 1995) could undermine the purposes of clinical supervision (e.g., professional development, client welfare; Borders et al., 2014) and threaten their right to a fair evaluation as students and supervisees (American Counseling Association [ACA], 2014; CACREP, 2015). Providing supervisees with clear information on their roles can assist with reducing nondisclosure (Cook et al. 2019) and lowering anxiety about their performance (Ellis et al., 2015). These practices allow for safeguarding supervisees and clients, fair supervision evaluation practices (Stark, 2017), and assuring quality supervision instruction grounded in student and instructor perspectives and adult learning processes (Borders, 2019). Much of the current supervision literature contains guidelines for instructors to effectively conduct supervision (Stark, 2017). For example, Best Practices in Clinical Supervision (Borders et al., 2014) offers specific recommendations for those providing clinical supervision (i.e., supervisors). The expectations of supervisees are implied in the guiding document (e.g., arrive on time to supervision, engage in the supervision process), but the specific roles and responsibilities for supervisees are not explicitly addressed. Whereas others (e.g., Homrich et al., 2014) have conceptualized standards relevant to supervisees’ roles in clinical supervision, including self-reflection and self-exploration, communicating information truthfully and accurately, and engaging actively in opportunities for personal and professional development. The importance of supervisees’ contributions have also been noted by scholars (e.g., Norem et al., 2006; Stark, 2017; Wilcoxon et al., 2005). For instance, several authors identified supervisee characteristics that are helpful to the learning process in supervision, such as being self-directed, motivated, mature, autonomous, proactive, and open to new learning experiences, all of which are perceived as helping supervisees successfully navigate supervision (Norem et al., 2006; Stark, 2017; Wilcoxon et al., 2005). In an earlier effort to clarify roles and expectations for the supervision process, Munson (2002) identified several supervisee rights, including (a) meeting consistently and regularly with a supervisor, (b) engaging in growth-oriented supervision that considers one’s personal privacy, (c) participating in theoretically grounded supervision, (d) receiving clear evaluation criteria and evaluations informed by direct observation, and (e) having a supervisor who is adequately trained. Additionally, Munson suggested that supervisees ought to be able to speak freely in supervision, need encouragement to integrate prior learning from other counseling classes (which supports Borders, 2019), and should remain open and curious about the learning process. Overall, the author’s work supports the need for providing supervision based on expectations for both supervisor and supervisee performance.