Simple Not Easy: a Phenomenological Study of School Counselor Clinical Supervision Experiences

Abstract

Clinical supervision is a valuable practice for mental health professionals working in any therapeutic capacity (Bernard & Goodyear, 2009). However, the application of supervision is not uniformly applied across counseling professions and contexts. School counseling supervision, for example, has been a topic of complexity and debate within the counseling profession, as professional identity and development needs differ. Current literature has largely centered on operationalizing the process of school counseling supervision through counseling theory and proposed models of supervision (Hilts et al. in Journal of Counselor Leadership and Advocacy, 9(2), 99–114, 2022). There is an identifiable gap in understanding the nuanced needs of school counselors and how to address those needs to make clinical supervision accessible and practical in the workplace. This interpretative phenomenological analysis study examines the experiences of seven practicing school counselors in the USA who engaged in ongoing peer-to-peer clinical supervision with author one. Results from this study include three superordinate themes that inform foundational concepts of effective school counseling supervision as “simple, not easy”: (1) counselor growth, (2) supervisor knowledge, and (3) sustainability. The practical implications of these findings are discussed, and recommendations are provided.