Field Instruction: Developmental Stages Offering Supervisory Opportunities

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Field Instruction Developmental Stages Offering
Supervisory Opportunities
Loretta Vitale Saks NCSSS Office of Field
Instruction September 2005
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Overview of presentation

• Developmental stages of field
• How they may affect supervisory process
• Issues for supervision
• Tools for supervision

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Field Internship Developmental Stages

• Stage 1 Anticipation Honeymoon
• Stage 2 Disillusionment Confronting Reality
• Stage 3 Competence Mastery
• Stage 4 Closure Termination

The information in this presentation is taken
from Cochrane, Susan F. Hanley, Marla Martin
(1999)Learning through field A developmental
approach. (1999). Allyn Bacon Boston, MA and
Sweitzer, H. Frederick and King, Mary A. (2004).
The successful internship transformation
empowerment. Brooks/Cole Publishing Company
Canada.
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Stages the Supervisory Process

• How student moves through stages will affect the
  supervisory process, offering
• Obstacles to the supervisory relationship
• Opportunities for growth
• Task accomplishment
• Increasingly complex assignments
• Concerns that can be discussed or avoided
• Hoped for resolutions vs. staying stuck

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Stage 1 Anticipation Honeymoon

• Positive expectations as internship begins
• Also some anxieties
• Feel vulnerable and self-conscious
• What will role be?
• What if ?
• Will my field instructor ?
• Will my student ?
• Important to identify support systems
• For student
• For field instructor too!

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Stage 1 Issues for supervision

• What is supervision?
• support, teaching, administration
• Offer safe environment
• Supportive yet challenging
• Open discussion of concerns
• Clear supervisory boundaries
• Clarify roles, expectations, and policies

Kadushin, A. (1976). Supervision in social work.
New York Columbia University Press.
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Stage 1 Tools for supervision

• Orientation
• Key for helping student feel welcome and
  knowledgeable about agency
• Initial learning activities likely to be more
  passive than active
• Attend to administrative tasks
• Supervisory agenda
• Helps student assume responsibility for learning
• Have student relate classroom learning to
  practice
• Learning Plan
• Can help student individualize placement
• Clarify learning goals activities

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Stage 1 Tools for supervision

• Communication Styles Inventory
• Useful tool for discussing communication styles
  supervisory relationship
• How we respond in normal and stressful
  situations

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Stage 2 Disillusionment Confronting Reality

• Whats wrong? stage
• May feel frustration, anger, confusion, panic,
  stress
• May become disillusioned
• with agency
• with field instructor
• with social work
• This isnt what I thought it would be

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Stage 2 Issues for supervision

• Help student develop skills in receiving and
  giving feedback
• Help student examine expectations
• Normalize feelings and behaviors
• Give permission for student to make mistakes
• Necessary for growth

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Stage 2 Issues for supervision

• Encourage student to confront doubts and fears
• with peers
• with field instructor
• with integrative seminar professor
• Personal issues surfacing in supervision?
• Overreactions to clients /or field instructor?
• Transference/countertransference issues?
• Refer to CUA Counseling Center
• Contact Counseling Center social workers for
  referrals

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Stage 2 Tools for supervision

• Supervision as time for checking in
• Refer back to CSI if relationship is difficult
• Refer back to Learning Plan to see how
  progressing
• Assist students with tasks
• Review assignments
• Agency paper
• Process recordings
• Agency-required documentation

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Stage 3 Competence Mastery

• Confidence grows
• More aware
• More active
• More analytical
• Really invested in the work
• Seek more challenging assignments
• More tuned in to ethical issues
• Learn to leave worries at agency
• Compromise between reality expectations
• Take more initiative in learning

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Stage 3 Issues for supervision

• Help student evaluate own practice
• Review growth
• Is student seeking additional challenges?
• Identify what learning is still needed

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Stage 3 Tools for supervision

• Review process recordings, assessments, macro
  assignments
• Interviewing and assessment skills
• Use of self
• Beginning to apply theory to interview or task
• Revisit Learning Plan
• Early Assessment
• Discuss where growth most needed
• Review Final Evaluation to check that NCSSS
  expectations are being met

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Stage 4 Closure Termination

• Ambivalent process for all involved!
• A process everyone would like to ignore
• Time for reflection
• On past experiences with endings
• On growth and learning
• Use learning to develop new goals and plans

Much of this section is taken from Danowski,
William A. (2005). In the field, a real-life
survival guide for the social work internship.
Boston, MA Allyn Bacon.
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Stage 4 Issues in Supervision

• Start the closure process early
• How does your agency deal with termination with
  interns?
• Exploration of students feelings about
• Leaving the internship setting
• Terminating with clients
• Passing on incomplete tasks/projects to others
• End of supervisory relationship

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Stage 4 Issues in Supervision

• Parallel process
• Intern-client termination field
  instructor-student termination
• Complicated feelings ambivalence, confusion,
  sadness, relief
• What next?

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Stage 4 Issues in Supervision

• Talk about clients feelings about termination
• Experts at termination may have had numerous
  social workers
• How can termination help client grow in
  relationships?
• Mourn loss of relationship but hopefulness of
  taking something new with you

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Stage 4 Tools in supervision

• Supervisory agenda
• Process recordings, case presentations, reports,
  projects
• Another look at the Learning Plan
• Have objectives been met?
• New goals discussion of career paths in social
  work
• NCSSS End-of-Year Evaluation of Field
  Participants
• Good opportunity to evaluate self as field
  instructor

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Enjoy the journey!