MSW Students' Views of Supervision: Factors Contributing to Satisfactory Field Experiences

Abstract

This article summarizes the results of a qualitative study that examined the experiences of Master's in Social Work (MSW) students during their field internships. The authors conducted focus groups in which students were asked to describe those factors which contributed to successful and/or problematic supervisory experiences. Students expressed that clear expectations of supervision, mutual goal setting of the supervision, the student's ability to advocate for herself, and the ability to use the supervisor as a mentor were all factors that contributed to successful supervision. Other factors that led to confusion in supervision are noted and, last, implications for field supervision are noted.

KEYWORDS:

• MSW students
• successful supervision
• mentoring
• advocacy
• goal setting

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the Brown Foundation, who supported this research with a research grant.

Notes

Social work supervisors in field placement sites are typically referred to as field supervisor or field instructor. For the purposes of this multidisciplinary readership, the authors will use the term supervisor throughout the article to denote the person providing supervision to social work students in their field placement sites.

The authors of this article acknowledge that our data need to be considered pilot data as the number of participants was limited. We refer to this later as a limitation of the study.