Facilitating supervisees’ developing competence through supervisory conversation

Abstract

Research on assessing supervisees’ professional development (PD) has been primarily focused on formal end-point, summative evaluations. Little attention has been given to the role that routine supervisory conversations play in formative PD evaluations. This study takes a situated/dialogical approach to explore how PD evaluations are locally proposed, recognized, transacted, and conversationally accomplished in the conversations of actual supervision practice. Informed by ethnomethodology, we discursively analyzed episodes of supervisory sessions selected by supervisory dyads, which they regarded as significant to the supervisee’s PD. We describe and exemplify five conversational Practices by which supervisory dyads brought about shared evaluations vis-à-vis the supervisee’s PD, through supervisory conversations.

Keywords:

• clinical supervision
• assessment
• feedback
• professional development
• professional competence
• discourse analysis

Acknowledgments

Advanced Human Capital Program, Becas Chile. CONICYT (Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT, Chile).