A Heuristic Model of Supervision Using Small Objects to Develop the Senses

Abstract

For a Drama therapy supervisor, it’s important to have a suitable model for supervision practice; a model that guides, supports, empowers and enables the supervisee to discover emerging themes in their development as a therapist. The model needs to be flexible enough to utilize non-verbal means of communication and at the same time help to focus the supervisee’s experience as a therapist. Such a model would be suitable to explore the tensions between personal experience and professional roles, as unworked-through themes in one’s personal life will emerge in one’s professional practice [1]. The supervision model needs to be flexible enough to contain chaos and uncertainty, but not too rigid or restrictive to limit creativity. The purpose of this paper is to consider a research model suitable for supervision that is suited and congruent to eliciting the supervisee’s senses through the use of small symbolic objects. The purpose of supervision is to help the supervisee work with personal or professional limitations that might impact on the client work and support their exploration to enable them to go beyond the familiar self.