Training and Education in Professional Psychology © 2014 American Psychological Association

2015, Vol. 9, No. 2, 183–186 1931-3918/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tep0000078

Experiential Exposure to the Supervision Competency

in Graduate Education
Ryan N. Sharma
California Lutheran University

Training in clinical supervision is increasingly emphasized as a core competency in professional

psychology, yet methods for providing students with an initial training experience as supervisors in
graduate programs are limited. This article describes an experiential supervision exercise that can be
incorporated into a graduate class in clinical supervision, providing students with introductory exposure
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

to the supervision competency. Results from student-reported perceptions of the exercise are presented,
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

including the impact of the exercise on students’ desire to provide clinical supervision during their career.

Keywords: supervision, professional supervision, competency, graduate psychology education, clinical

psychology graduate training

Training in clinical supervision is a growing area of professional
psychology. Indeed, through the transition to competency-based
education in professional psychology, providing clinical supervi-
sion has been identified as a core competency by every major
competency initiative throughout their brief histories (Schaffer,
Rodolfa, Hatcher, & Fouad, 2013). Additionally, the accrediting
bodies of both the American Psychological Association and the
Canadian Psychological Association have supervision as one of
the core competencies required of all accredited programs. It has
been stated that simply having the experience of being supervised
or being a good clinician does not necessarily make one an
effective supervisor (Falender et al., 2004). Given that clinical
supervision plays a primary role in the training of psychologists, it
is appropriate that the field continues to study how this compe-
tency is best developed in our students.
The earliest definitions of the supervision competency placed it
within the context of management, noting that supervision was one of
the activities that “direct, organize, and control the services of psy-
chologists and others” that are rendered to the greater community
(McHolland, 1992, p. 165). As a more focused aspect of management,
competency in supervision should involve the teaching of core knowl-
edge in supervision research and methods, skills in moving trainees
toward clinical and professional competence, and professional atti-
tudes such as accountability and integrity that can be modeled (Bent,
Schindler, & Dobbins, 1992; Malloy, Dobbins, Ducheny, & Winfrey,
2009). Recently, the American Psychological Association (2014) has
This article was published Online First December 22, 2014.
RYAN N. SHARMA received his MA in clinical psychology from Pepper-
dine University and his PsyD in clinical psychology from the University of
Denver. He is currently an assistant professor and the director of clinical
training at California Lutheran University. His areas of professional inter-
est include clinical training, multicultural psychology and ethnic identity
development, behavioral therapies, and treatments for anxiety disorders.
CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS ARTICLE should be addressed to
Ryan N. Sharma, California Lutheran University, 2201 Outlet Center
Drive, Suite 600, Oxnard, CA, 93036. E-mail: rnsharma@callutheran.edu
extended the principles of this competency to a set of guidelines that
promote competent supervision.
The exercise described here aims to develop the professional
knowledge, skills, and attitudes of clinical supervision through a
time-limited applied experience. By involving the students at var-
ious levels through several components of the exercise (i.e., as a
supervisor, supervisee, consultant, and observer), students may be
able to learn about supervision processes that may otherwise go
unnoticed when simply receiving supervision or learning about it
didactically. These subtle processes that embody the critical and
analytical thinking aspect of the supervision competency can in-
clude the microinteractional processes that elicit the supervisee’s
personal struggles, the application of specific supervision models,
and the behaviors that contribute to a strong supervisory alliance.
The benefit of experiential activities in training the supervision
competency has been noted by many authors (e.g., Falender et al.,
2004), yet the research on models that extend beyond didactic
training is exceptionally scarce. One of the more common methods
is supervision of supervision, whereby a training supervisor will
receive her or his own supervision that is extended over a period
of time (see Power, 2013). This technique may be more typical for
training supervisors who are not licensed, such as predoctoral
interns or postdoctoral fellows supervising practicum students. In
these cases, the training supervisor and trainee are both working
under the license of and responsible to a primary supervisor.
Another common model is the case conference model, or peer
consultation, where supervisors may meet and consult on super-
visees in the same way that clinicians might consult on clinical
cases (Granello, Kindsvatter, Granello, Underfer-Babalis, &
Moorhead, 2008; Powell, 1996). As there are not typically any
licensure relationships between participants in peer consultation,
proponents of the model argue that being able to select from a
diversity of perspectives is particularly valuable in developing
critical thinking, self-awareness, and professional development
(Granello et al., 2008).
One model that is more psychodynamically oriented is group
supervision of supervision. This model extends the peer consulta-
tion model described above by including process discussions

183
 184 SHARMA
around the members’ development as clinical supervisors (DiMino
& Risler, 2012; Yerushalmi, 1999). Involving both didactic and
experiential components, the group supervision of supervision
format allows training supervisors to develop deeper awareness of
relational processes that are foundational to the supervisory alli-
ance, including the cultivation of attunement that will assist su-
pervisors in meeting the unique needs of their supervisees.
These particular models may challenge doctoral programs in
professional psychology wanting to provide students with intro-
ductory exposure to clinical supervision. First, it is questionable to
assume that doctoral students— even when advanced—would be
skilled and knowledgeable enough for assuming formal and on-
going supervisory relationships. Indeed, according to the compe-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
tency benchmarks (Fouad et al., 2009), students who are ready for
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
internship are only expected to have the foundational knowledge
of supervisory roles, models, and techniques. Second, there may be
limited resources of practice supervisees, such as junior practicum
students or paraprofessionals. Some programs may also struggle
with using students within a program for both training supervisor
and supervisee since this has the potential to lead to dual relation-
ships and boundary blurring between peers.
Coursework appears to be the most common method of teaching
supervision in professional psychology doctoral programs. An
early survey of APA-accredited doctoral programs found that 64%
had supervision training somewhere in their coursework (Scott,
Ingram, Vitanza, & Smith, 2000). A similar rate of 65% was found
in CPA-accredited doctoral programs (Hadjistavropoulos, Kehler,
& Hadjistavropolous, 2010). A survey by the National Council of
Schools and Programs in Professional Psychology (NCSPP) found
that 80% of member programs included a course in supervision
(Paszkiewicz, 2006).
At the level of providing experiences within academic courses,
it is recommended that students engage in learning about their own
experiences as supervisees, apply models of supervision to their
supervisors, and engage in direct practice of supervision through
role plays (Malloy et al., 2009). Newman (2013) offers several
examples of class activities such as a role-play involving the
instructor as the client, having the students supervise the instructor
on her or his recorded session, and self-reflection exercises. An-
other example was self-supervision, whereby the students will
supervise themselves through the analysis of one of their own
recorded therapy sessions.
The exercise described here itself has gone through four revi-
sions over four years, culminating in the design below. All of the
iterations share some parallels with what was described as meta-
supervision by Newman (2013), who describes a professional
providing expert consultation to the supervisor without any legal
responsibility to the client. Key differences between this assign-
ment and Newman’s model are that this exercise is performed
simultaneously with the supervision session, includes multiple
participant consultants, and requires written analysis.
The Assignment Design
This ungraded assignment was designed to be embedded within a
required, third-year graduate course in clinical supervision so that
there would be foundational clinical and didactic training that can be
subsequently integrated into the exercise. Because each student will
rotate through being a supervisor in the exercise once, the number of
exercises during the course will be equivalent to the number of
students in the class. This author has conducted the exercise in classes
as small as five students and as large as 16 students, though the
observation team and observation papers were omitted in the smaller
class sizes. More than eight students in either the consultation or
observation team could overwhelm the training supervisor with feed-
back. The students who are not participating as the supervisor or
supervisee are divided into two teams: a consultation team and an
observation team. Planning at the beginning of the course can ensure
that students have equal experiences of being in both teams. The
instructor, who should be a licensed psychologist, is always in the
consultation team. The physical arrangement of the classroom in-
cludes the supervisor and supervisee at the front of the room, the
consultation team forming a half circle in front of the supervisor and
supervisee, and the observation team at desks behind the consultation
team. In sum, each student will be a supervisor once, a supervisee
once, and will then split the remaining exercises equally between the
consultation team and the reflecting team.
The exercise runs approximately 45 min, with an additional 10
to 15 min reserved for discussion and debriefing. The number of
exercises during any class session is at the discretion of the
instructor, though this author planned one exercise per class ses-
sion. To keep the experience realistic, the supervisee in the exer-
cise is instructed to present a case with which they are currently
working in their practicum placement. Practicum site agreements
include permission to use client material in educational activities.
Additionally, all identifying information is changed or masked to
protect client confidentiality. Student supervisees are instructed to
discuss any recommendations or insights with their primary su-
pervisor as the exercise itself serves only a consultation function;
the professional and legal responsibility to the client remains with
the primary supervisor in the practicum placement.
Process
The supervisor provides supervision with the support of the
consultation team; if the supervisor gets stuck or is unsure of how
to proceed, she or he may “pause” the supervision session and use
the consultation team for advice. Additionally, the consultation
team can interrupt and pause the supervision session and provide
suggestions for the supervisor. During the 45-min exercise, the
instructor should ensure that there are at least three or four pauses.
The observation team is instructed to write observation papers
on the processes that they observe in the supervision session. Clear
instructions are given that they are not to write evaluative com-
ments; rather, they are to comment on the behaviors and interac-
tions that they observe occurring between the supervisor and
supervisee and to highlight principles or techniques stemming
from the supervision models or processes that they have been
learning (e.g., noting when and how a supervisor validates the
supervisee and how the supervisee responds). The observation
papers are submitted to the instructor at the end of the exercise.
The instructor then edits the papers by removing any comments
that are negatively evaluative or critical, comments that seem to
give advice, or comments that are focused on the supervisee.
Moreover, the papers from the observation team are reduced to
process comments and supervision principles as well as any pos-
itive feedback for the training supervisor. The feedback is then
returned to the supervisor in anonymous form.
 EXPERIENTIAL EXPOSURE TO SUPERVISION COMPETENCY
Rationale
Within the supervision competency defined by the NCSPP
developmental achievement levels (Malloy et al., 2009), the do-
mains of assuring client and organizational welfare, training and
mentoring, and ethics are captured in part by the various compo-
nents of the assignment. In assuring client and organizational
welfare, students learn about the models of supervision as they
apply their own working models as a supervisor. The observation
papers also help students learn and apply the principles and tech-
niques of the supervision models to what they observe in the
exercise. With the consultation team present and providing direc-
tion (both solicited and unsolicited), the student supervisor begins
to learn when extra supervision is warranted.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Additionally, multiple areas of knowledge and skills in training
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
and mentoring are elicited by this experiential exercise. Students
begin to explore their multiple roles as supervisors as they are
pulled to help their peers in novel ways. They must also work
quickly to build a supervisory alliance, attend to the differences
between themselves and their supervisees, and apply their knowl-
edge of research and training to help the supervisee solve a
problem. It is also during this time that students learn to incorpo-
rate the feedback from the consultation team while also getting
feedback from their peers through the process papers.
Lastly, in the ethics domain of the supervision competency,
supervisors and the consultation team must maintain awareness of
the legal and ethical issues relevant to the cases being discussed as
well as the appropriate professional boundaries that circumscribe
various treatment settings. Some of the more common questions
that supervisors ask the consultation team revolve around their
lack of content knowledge specific to the case or setting, indicating
that they are aware of their own limits in supervisory skills.
There are also several logistical benefits to this in-class exercise.
The student supervisor has direct oversight of a licensed psychologist,
who can mediate the appropriate depth of the time-limited experience.
The student supervisor also has real-time access to the instructor and
the consultation team, who can offer multiple perspectives and op-
tions for moving forward. The consultation team becomes an active
participant in the supervision, giving them additional indirect experi-
ence. Lastly, as students naturally develop their own unique models
and styles of supervision, the class is able to observe these in their
peers in a serial fashion, allowing them to learn from and select the
techniques that may work for them.
Considerations
Some considerations regarding the implementation of the assign-
ment are worth noting. First, there can be a tendency for the consul-
tation team to overfocus on the supervisee, creating a climate where
the supervisees feel that their clinical work is being scrutinized or
criticized. This may be due to how students are typically trained to
participate in case conference. The class needs to be reminded that the
focus of the exercise is on the supervisor and that the consultation
team is there to support the supervisors in their training. This includes
moderating the comments of the consultation team and instructing the
students to direct their feedback to the supervisor only.
Second, some students may feel uncomfortable either performing
supervision in front of their peers or disclosing personal issues that
may come up in their clinical work as the supervisee. This is amplified
when it is being done in front of an entire class, though it can be
185
mediated by the level of class cohesion and mutual trust. Other factors
such as the vulnerability of students in the numerical minority (e.g.,
students of color) can also contribute to the likelihood of negative
experiences that may detract from learning. The instructor should be
sensitive to the level of comfort of the participants and assist in
moderating the level of supervisory depth. The debriefing period that
follows the exercise should attend to any anxiety experienced by
either the supervisor or supervisee by allowing them the opportunity
to talk about their experience in the exercise. The debriefing should
include normalizing clinical and supervisory development while pro-
viding both validation and positive feedback. Since some students
may not feel comfortable making disclosures or processing their
experience with the entire class, the instructor should be available
individually for further support and direction. To further mitigate
discomfort, the instructor may also consider allowing students to
choose their partners, use a fictionalized case, or opt for an alternative
assignment. The exercise may be contraindicated for cohorts that are
struggling with ruptures in trust, low morale, or intragroup conflict.
Measure and Sample
Because the specific aspects of this supervision assignment were
not included in the end of course evaluation, a separate question-
naire was created to assess the students’ perception of the super-
vision exercise and its components. Because these data were
sought outside of routine educational evaluation, approval from an
institutional review board was obtained.
The self-created questionnaire consisted of 10 items, all of
which gathered responses on a Likert scale. The first seven items
were rated on a 4-point scale (1 ⫽ strongly agree, 2 ⫽ agree, 3 ⫽
disagree, and 4 ⫽ strongly disagree) and asked both general and
specific questions about the exercise activities. The last three items
asked respondents to report their interest in becoming a clinical
supervisor, the influence of the supervision exercise on their desire
to become a clinical supervisor, and the influence of the class as a
whole on their desire to become a clinical supervisor. Because of
threats to anonymity, no narrative responses were solicited.
Even though the exercise itself has undergone four successive
iterations through four cohorts of students, the most recent itera-
tion was the only one that included the observation papers. As
such, only students from the most recent class were invited to
submit responses. Ten of the 12 students who took the class
submitted responses (83.3%). All students were in their third year
of a doctoral program in clinical psychology and had at least one
and a half years of practicum training.
Results and Discussion
Overall, all of the students either agreed (5/10) or strongly agreed
(5/10) that “the supervision exercise was a valuable experience.”
There was also high agreement that the consultation team aspect of
the exercise was useful from both vantage points: being part of the
team offering consultation (3/10 strongly agreeing and 7/10 agreeing)
as well as having the consultation team available while playing the
role of the supervisor (3/10 strongly agreeing and 7/10 agreeing).
Overall, the study finds that students extracted value from the super-
vision exercise and found it useful to their learning.
Perceptions on the observation papers were a little more mixed,
though most students agreed (6/10) or strongly agreed (1/10) that
 186 SHARMA
writing them “helped [them] understand supervision on a different
level.” Three students disagreed that writing the observation pa-
pers helped them understand supervision on a different level.
When asked about the usefulness of receiving the observation
papers as feedback, there was a wider spread of responses across
the scale, with 2/10 strongly agreeing, 5/10 agreeing, 2/10 dis-
agreeing, and 1/10 strongly disagreeing. Because a few students
expressed disagreement with the utility of the observation papers,
more inquiry should be performed to understand the unique com-
plaints of this exercise component. For instance, it is unknown if
the observation papers to these students were experienced as
critical, cursory, or simply cumbersome.
The questionnaire also assessed the students’ perceived level of
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
comfort during the exercise for both the role of the supervisor and
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
the supervisee. Overall, most students either agreed or strongly
agreed that they were comfortable as the supervisor (8/10) and as
the supervisee (9/10). No students strongly disagreed with these
statements regarding comfort.
Four of the respondents indicated that the exercise increased
their interest in providing clinical supervision during their career
while the remaining six said that their interest stayed the same. In
sum, this suggests that the exercise can influence a core attitude
within the training and mentoring domain of the supervision com-
petency: desire to supervise others.
While the above results provide a preliminary perspective into how
students experience this exercise, it should be cautioned that the
conclusions are limited by both the small sample and the subjective
nature of an evaluation tool administered by the instructor. Regarding
this latter point, even though the possibility of student identification
was completely removed from the survey method, students do gen-
erally aim to please those who are in positions of power over them.
Subsequent studies could aim to directly measure the competencies as
developed through the exercise components by the instructor or other
competent professionals. For example, the knowledge of supervision
models could be assessed through the observation papers as students
apply the models to what they observe.
Conclusion
This preliminary study shows that an experiential exercise for
exposing students to introductory supervision can be feasibly inte-
grated into a graduate supervision course and can provide a positive
learning experience for students. Because the exercise relies on a
group culture that is conducive to open sharing and support, the level
of group cohesion between class members and potential vulnerability
of minority students must be taken into account before implementing
the exercise. This exercise provides students with an opportunity to
understand clinical supervision from multiple perspectives. As a sup-
plement to other modes of class instruction on the issues of clinical
supervision, this supervision exercise can afford a useful experiential
component to classroom learning.
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Received June 17, 2014
Revision received October 27, 2014
Accepted October 27, 2014 䡲