Supervisor Experience, Counselor Trainee Development, and Client Outcomes: A Roundtable Discussion

Clinical supervision is a universally required experience for counselors-in-training in virtually all accredited academic settings in the fields of counseling psychology and counselor education. The supervision literature emphasizes that a counseling supervisor’s essential role is to maintain professional standards and client welfare (Bernard & Goodyear, 2008). During supervision practica experiences, doctoral level counseling students routinely supervise master’s level counseling students’ work with clients in training clinics. Differences in client outcomes based on whether master’s students are supervised by doctoral student supervisors or licensed psychologists have not been covered in the supervision literature. Given the important and prevalent role of supervision in the fields of counseling psychology and counselor education, it is important to contribute additional research addressing supervisor experience level and its impact on counselor trainee development and client outcomes. During the roundtable experience, this writer hopes to discuss which supervisor characteristics would be most important to examine during data collection. Additionally, this writer would like to discuss implications for supervision practica within accredited programs in the future. If findings suggest that client outcomes are positively correlated with supervisor level of experience the question of whether or not it is ethical to continue using doctoral students as supervisor trainees will need to be addressed. During the roundtable, it would be interesting to brainstorm methods other than supervision practica with master\u27s level counselor trainees to train doctoral level students in the area of supervision