How Reflective is Student Supervision? A Study of Supervision in Action

Reflective practice has been advocated by authors such as Schön, and Mattingly and Fleming, as a method by which professionals can become more effective. It could also be used during supervision sessions with students on placement as a way of teaching them the skills of occupational therapy. One of the basic assumptions of reflective practice is that there should be an equal and open relationship between supervisor and student.

A small study was carried out to investigate the supervision of occupational therapy students on fieldwork. Three pairs of student and supervisor were studied using observation, interviews and analysis of tape recordings of supervision sessions. The results reflect those of similar studies of supervision by Schön and by Fish, namely, that the subjects' espoused theories did not always match their theories-in-use. Supervisors and students alike were not aware that, although they believed in active, student-centred learning, the supervisors were largely in control of the sessions. Students could have been encouraged more to express their feelings and ideas, and could have taken more opportunities to do so. These and similar findings imply that, as practitioners, we need to monitor our own professional performance through action research.