The Effect of Learning Styles and Empathy on Perceived Effectiveness of Social Work Student Supervision

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of two central variables of supervision-empathy and learning styles-on perceived effectiveness of student supervision, as well as to examine the relationship between them. Two learning styles (people-oriented style and task-oriented style) are positively, significantly correlated with two factors of perceived student supervision effectiveness (students' perception of supervision effectiveness in terms of themselves and their perception of supervision effectiveness in terms of their clients). Among the variables of empathy, significant correlations were found between two of four componentsperspective taking and personal distress-and perceived effectiveness of student supervision. The former was correlated with both factors of students' perception of effectiveness, the latter with students' perception of effectiveness in terms of their clients only. Suppression and deduction of overlapping (the common variance) of the variables in the regression tests reveals that three of the variables-perspective taking, and both learning styles-have an impact on students' perception of supervision effectiveness. The people-oriented style affects students' perceptions of supervision effectiveness in terms of themselves, while the task-oriented style affects their perceptions of supervision effectiveness in terms of the client.

Key Words:

• Social work
• perceived effectiveness
• student supervision
• learning style
• empathy