Supervision Conversations: Negotiating Professional Development through Talk

Abstract

Research on assessing supervisees’ professional development (PD) has been primarily focused on either exploring subjective experiences or refining objective aspects of professional competence. As a complement, this study takes a situated/dialogical approach to explore how PD assessments are transacted and conversationally accomplished in actual supervision practice (i.e., how supervisory dyads bring about shared understandings vis-à-vis the supervisee’s PD through supervisory talk). Informed by Practice Theory and Ethnomethodology, I explore episodes of supervisory talk that four supervisory dyads regarded as significant to the supervisees’ PD (i.e., significant episodes). My focal discursive analysis of six significant episodes examines how participant supervisory dyads express, recognize, account for, negotiate and eventually agree upon relevant aspects of supervisees’ PD. I describe five “big” Practices/Outcomes, and three clusters of “small” conversational practices, through which participants negotiated their understandings of supervisees’ PD. I further suggest that PD assessments are ubiquitous, negotiated, and reflexive in the supervisory process. Finally, I discuss implications for supervision theory, research, and practice.