Approaches to learning in professional supervision: supervisee perceptions of processes and outcome

This study investigated supervisees’ perceptions of the learning processes and outcomes of professional supervision. Two hundred and sixty-four psychology graduates involved in the process of professional supervision for registration responded to a mail survey regarding their supervisor's approach to supervision, their own approach to supervision and their perceptions of the overall effectiveness of the process. Findings suggest that professional supervision can be readily conceptualised as a learning relationship. Supervisees’ approaches to supervision comprised the three dimensions of surface-disorganised, evaluation anxiety, and endorsement of supervisor capability. Supervisors’ approaches to supervision were understood by supervisees in terms of facilitative and didactic approaches to learning. A facilitative approach to supervision was associated with enhanced evaluations of supervisor capability and a reduction in supervisee confusion and anxiety. A facilitative, but not a didactic, supervisory approach positively influenced supervisees’ perceptions of the effectiveness of supervision.     

Influence Strategies in the Supervisory Dyad: An Investigation Into the Effects of Gender and Age

A content analysis of audiotapes from 42 counseling supervisory dyads examined the effects of supervisor and supervisee gender on the influence strategies used in the session. Gender of the supervisor was not related to influence strategy. Supervisors of both genders were significantly more likely to accept or build upon the ideas generated by female supervisees and asked for more opinions from male supervisees. Male supervisees gave significantly more suggestions than did female supervisees, and female supervisees praised their supervisors more often than did male supervisees. Also, age differences between supervisor and supervisee interacted with gender to affect influence strategies used in the supervisory dyad.     

Cognitive Techniques as a Means for Facilitating Supervisee Development

During periods of uncertainty or psychological distress, a supervisee may encounter or develop rigid or unhelpful thinking patterns that could delay development by promoting discouraging realities and experiences. Such cognitive experiences often are so subtle that they occur outside of the supervisee's immediate awareness. This article explores how the cognitive model of counseling could be used in supervision as a guide to help the supervisor and supervisee discover and modify negative thought processes.     

Appropriating WhatsApp-mediated postgraduate supervision to negotiate “relational authenticity” in resource-constrained environments

Despite the surging prominence of literature that explores mobile instant messaging’s (MIM) capacity to leverage transformative pedagogical practices in higher education, studies that unravel the appropriation of MIM to leverage postgraduate supervision in authentic learning contexts are less frequent. Consequently, a gap persists on the nature of postgraduate supervisees’ existential and relational authenticity as they interface with MIM and supervisors during their consultation processes. This study drew on Heidegger’s existential authenticity, a netnography of WhatsApp-based supervisor–supervisee consultations and in-depth interviews to unravel how WhatsApp-mediated postgraduate supervision fosters the social construction of relational and existential authenticity in resource-constrained contexts. The findings suggest that authentic supervision was constructed through supervisor–supervisees’ negotiation of academic hierarchies, supervisees’ self-expression and self-disclosure, their management of moments of anxiety and conflict deflation in ambivalent supervision scenarios. The study recommends that supervisors need to manage the significant yet unrecognised “nervous moments” in technology-mediated supervision environments, where compression of hierarchy may be conflated with negation of the supervisor’s authority.     

Value System Similarity and the Supervisory Relationship

This study assesses the value systems held by supervisors and supervisees in the counseling practice. The relation between value system similarity and two dependent measures was examined; the level of communication within and the overall satisfaction with the relationship. Participants included 37 student supervisees and seven supervisors in a master's program. Correlation coefficients were computed to establish the relationships between the dependent measures and between value similarity measures and the dependent variables. The results did not indicate a meaningful relation between the similarity of value systems for supervisee and supervisor and either dependent measure. The results, however, did indicate a strong relationship between the supervisee's satisfaction with the supervisory relationship and the level of communication that was developed in supervision.     

Doctoral supervisors’ and supervisees’ responses to co-supervision

With the increasing demand for doctoral education, co-supervision, understood as the formally agreed supervision of a research student by two or more academics in doctoral programmes, has become common practice in postgraduate circles in the UK. If supervision with one supervisor is complex due to personal, academic, ethical and sometimes cross-cultural issues, having two supervisors makes this process sufficiently challenging in practice to be specifically investigated in research, not least because of the additional communication issues. However, co-supervision is under-explored in the academic literature. In this article we look at the experience of co-supervision as reported by co-supervisors and those supervised by them in a UK university department within an arts and social sciences faculty, and aim to contribute to the literature on co-supervision by considering co-supervisors’ and their supervisees’ perspectives on co-supervision practices. Amid a general welcoming of the practice, with both parties seeing co-supervision entailing learning opportunities – for co-supervisors, learning from colleagues; for supervisees, learning from two experienced researchers – we report shared and specific concerns of these two groups. Time is a concern for both groups, but in different ways. Particularly interesting is the issue of harmony between the co-supervisors, including in feedback, the desirability of which will be perceived differently within any co-supervisor–supervisee relationship. The need for awareness-raising for co-supervisors as regards what their supervisees may feel but may not articulate may be greater for co-supervision than solo-supervision arrangements, given the additionally complex web of institutional and interpersonal relationships co-supervision entails.     

Supervision as a reciprocal learning process

Within educational psychology, as in other professions, there is a pervasive view of supervision as a one‐way learning process, with knowledge and skills being passed from supervisor to supervisee in a linear fashion. It is proposed that we need to shift our perspective in order to acknowledge the rich learning opportunities for both participants involved. This view is illustrated by an analysis of the author's own learning gains while supervising an Educational Psychologist in Training. It is suggested that viewing supervision as a reciprocal learning process has potential benefits for supervisors, supervisees and the profession as a whole.     

Trait Emotional Intelligence and Perceived Supervisory Working Alliance of Counseling Trainees and Their Supervisors in Agency Settings

The present study investigated the relationships between supervisee and supervisor trait emotional intelligence (EI) levels and their perception of the supervisory working alliance. Data were collected from 64 supervisor-supervisee dyads among masters-level community counseling internship students and their site supervisors. Findings indicated that supervisees and supervisors with higher levels of trait EI tended to perceive the supervisory working alliance more positively. However, findings did not support the presence of an interaction effect between supervisee and supervisor trait EI on either supervisees’ or supervisors’ perceptions of the working alliance. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Anticipating doctoral supervision: (Not) bridging the transition from supervisee to supervisor

Building on existing studies that ask doctoral supervisors how they understand their role, and what has influenced this understanding, this article explores invitations that are issued to supervisors to reflect in certain ways about the role of supervisor. The article calls into question the ways in which supervisors are invited to think about and represent supervision, by professional development courses, handbooks on supervision, and the questions that researchers pose about supervision. This discussion is situated in autoethnographic analysis of a valuable moment in the author's academic career for reflecting on these factors: the author is positioned directly between the role of doctoral supervisee and the role of doctoral supervisor. Through autoethnographic engagement with doctoral supervision literature, the article argues that professional development for supervisors would benefit from more critical analysis of the invitations which are issued to supervisors to reflect on the transition from supervisee to supervisor.     

Cybersupervision: Further Examination of Synchronous and Asynchronous Modalities in Counseling Practicum Supervision

The authors used an intensive single‐subject quantitative design to examine cybersupervision of counseling practicum students in a university setting. Five female supervisees volunteered to receive their required weekly supervision online during a 14‐week, semester‐long counseling practicum. Following a face‐to‐face orientation meeting, all remaining interactions among the supervisees and with the supervisor occurred electronically. Data were collected about the utility of the synchronous and asynchronous modalities, changes in supervisee competence and confidence during the practicum, and supervisee attitudes about the cybersupervision approach. The findings offered evidence that the web‐based modality could be used in similar settings.     

Test Anxiety in Elementary and Secondary School Students

In this article., we review the literature on the development of test anxiety in elementary and secondary school children. Recent theoretical conceptualizations of anxiety are presented. Anxiety is posited to be a multidimensional construct that has roots in how parents react to children's early achievement strivings. Its ontogeny is tied to children's developing capacity to interpret their school performance relative to their previous performance, to the performance of other children, as well as to the increasingly strict evaluative practices children encounter as they move through school. Intervention strategies for alleviating anxious children's poor performance in evaluative situations are discussed. Important issues for future anxiety research are presented, including the need for new measures of children's anxiety and for a more thorough assessment of both individual differences in how students experience anxiety and the developmental course 0f the components of anxiety.     

Subjective and Objective Intellectual Change in Older Adults

In this longitudinal study, 108 older individuals (M age = 70.58 years, SD = 6.94) estimated the extent to which their fluid and crystallized skills had changed over the previous three years. For each perceived change, individuals also estimated the extent to which numerous explanatory factors were responsible for such change. Crystallized skills were seen as unchanging, whereas fluid skills were perceived as having declined slightly. In both cases, self-initiated efforts to maintain one's skills were endorsed most frequently as explanations for the maintenance of one's skills. Variability in attributions in three-year changes in both fluid and crystallized skills was associated with individual differences in health, self perceived everyday cognitive failures, and state anxiety. The findings from this study suggest that it is important to identify factors over which older adults perceive themselves as having control as salient targets for educational interventions fostering a sense of self-efficacy, critical to feelings of enhanced competence in later life.     

Relationship dimensions in the professional supervision of psychology graduates: supervisee perceptions of processes and outcome

The professional supervision of new graduates to ensure both their effectiveness with clients and their personal learning and development is a common feature of a range of human services contexts. This study investigated psychology supervisees’ perceptions of relationship processes and outcomes in professional supervision. The relationship constructs of supervisor support, challenge and openness were investigated and related to the outcome variables of supervisee anxiety and perceived effectiveness of supervision. Psychology graduates (n=261) involved in the process of professional supervision for registration responded to a mail survey regarding the quality of their supervisory relationship. Findings established the relationship dimensions of levels of supervisor challenge, supervisor support and supervisor openness as independent but related constructs. Supervisees’ perceptions of supervisor support and openness predicted their perceptions of supervisor effectiveness. Supervisees’ perceptions of level of supervisor challenge predicted their self-reported levels of evaluative anxiety or defensiveness in the supervisory process.     

The effects of self set or externally set goals on learning in an uncertain environment

Monitoring refers to online awareness and self-evaluation of one's goal-directed actions, while Control refers to the generation and selection of goal-directed actions (Osman, 2010a). The present study examines the extent to which external estimations of performance influence monitoring and control behaviors. To achieve this, a complex dynamic decision making task was used in which three different cues were manipulated in order to control three outcomes. The experiment was divided into two conditions. The Externally guided-condition received information designed to influence people's evaluation of control performance, whereas the Self-guided-condition was not provided this information. The findings revealed that control performance differed according to whether the success of one's actions was evaluated against external or self-guided estimations of performance. This article proposes that Monitoring behaviors can strongly influence control behaviors and this is achieved according to the way in which outcomes of decisions are evaluated. Finally, with respect to adult learning, the findings from this study suggest that setting one's own goals do not lead to improvements in learning when the task is a complex one.     

Is It a Challenge or a Threat? A Dual-Process Model of Teachers' Cognition and Appraisal Processes During Conceptual Change

What accounts for well-meaning teachers' lack of implementation of subject-matter reforms, such as making one's classroom centered on problem solving, even when they positively value the reform and believe they are implementing it in their classrooms? Teachers' subject-matter beliefs may constrain them from adopting practices that conflict with those beliefs. The purpose of this article is to propose a theoretical model, the Cognitive–Affective Model of Conceptual Change, that integrates key findings from overly cognitive models of belief change with motivational and affective factors found in social psychology theory and research. This model explains why teachers' beliefs about instruction are resistant to reforms that challenge their existing beliefs, and it provides a conceptual framework within which to devise a better means of advancing teachers' beliefs and supporting them in the process of implementation.     

Flaunting one's academic pedigree? Self‐presentation of students from elite French schools

This article starts from the puzzle that although French elite institutions enjoy extremely positive and attractive images, students from these schools generally choose to conceal their academic pedigree in their daily interactions. We show that, in a context of growing inequalities of access to grandes écoles, the strategy of hiding one's student identity may be understood as the desire to avoid six core threats associated with declaring one's association with an elite school: not conforming to group norms, confirming a negative reputation, not living up to a positive reputation, reducing one's identity, losing control of one's identity, and threatening the identity of the other. The conclusions highlight the implications of this microsociological study on a host of much wider questions useful in better understanding the ambivalent relations that exist between French society and its elites issued from the grandes écoles.     

Test anxiety in mathematics among early undergraduate students in a British university in Malaysia

The level of test anxiety in mathematics subjects among early undergraduate students at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus is studied in this article. The sample consists of 206 students taking several mathematics modules who completed the questionnaires on test anxiety just before they entered the venue for midterm examinations. The sample data include the differences in the context of academic levels, gender groups and nationality backgrounds. The level of test anxiety in mathematics is measured using seven Likert questionnaire statements adapted from the Test Anxiety Inventory describing one's emotional feeling before the start of an examination. In general, the result shows that the students who had a lower score expectation were more anxious than those who had a higher score expectation, but that they obtained a better score than the expected score. In the context of academic levels, gender groups and nationality backgrounds, there were no significant correlations between the level of test anxiety and the students’ academic performance. The effect size of the correlation values ranged from extremely small to moderate.     

Becoming a teacher of writing: Primary student teachers reviewing their relationship with writing

This article investigates the extent to which Year One B.Ed student teachers arrived at university already possessing self‐confidence as writers. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection were used to identify students' self perceptions and confidence as writers and their understanding of processes of written composition. The article argues that to consciously engage student teachers in the writing process and to require them to reflect on that process can lead to their self efficacy as writers. Evidence from this study suggests one's self‐confidence, as a writer, is enhanced by explicitly engaging in self reflection of one's own approaches to writing. The findings have implications for course design of literacy components in teacher education internationally.     

Learning joyfully: An emotional and transformative experience

Abstract

In this article I focus on the emotion of joy in the classroom and identify the role that experiencing joy has in promoting engagement and satisfaction in learning. For educationists, the implication that the emotional climate of the classroom has as much to do with cognitive growth as it does with attitudinal needs to be recognised and addressed. As Bloom and his colleagues noted in 1956, the idea of dualistic notion of cognition and affect is untenable as these inform each other. How the brain is structured and developed affects how we learn. Because the circuitry of the brain is sculptured by emotional experiences it can alter during one's lifetime. Emotions contribute to the brain's neural circuitry experiencing joy will lay down neural pathways likely to serve the individual well for a lifetime. Furthermore, joy promotes holistic learning through engaging both left and right hemispheres. Joy, as an emotion, involves accepting challenges that stretch one's capacity and persevering through often‐painful experiences until a successful outcome is reached. This ultimate achievement can then be celebrated and recognised as a joyful learning experience. Teachers who promote the experience of joy in the classroom may do more than simply promote successful learning.