Live Supervision of Students in Field Placement: More than Just Watching

Abstract

Frequently, observation of social work students in ‘live’ work is absent or haphazard. An overview of the key literature examines the need for observation of students during training, explores the strengths and challenges of live supervision and describes a planned process for conducting live supervision. This approach incorporates four phases: collaborative preparation for a session of direct practice; observation of the student's work by a field educator; debriefing and feedback; and the development of a plan for further learning steps. Brief vignettes are used to illustrate the process. The article is enriched by the inclusion of student comments from the evaluations undertaken after live supervision activities.

Keywords:

• Supervision
• Students
• Reflection
• Australasia
• Practice Learning
• Practice Teaching

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the willingness of our BSW students to share with us their insights from their experiences of live supervision. The reviewers' comments have been most helpful and we thank them for their time and input.