Professional School Counselors\u27 Burnout, Coping and Supervision Frequency, Type and Alliance

Despite shared training, ethical practice guidelines and values, Professional School Counselors (PSCs) are less likely to receive clinical supervision than their mental health counterparts in other settings. School counselors are more likely to be supervised by Administrators, many of whom have never worked in a counseling related field. As a result, clinical feedback, ongoing professional development, and advocacy in areas such as caseload caps are not available to PSCs. School counselors, like other counseling professionals, are vulnerable to burnout and have the added disadvantage of not having the support of supervision specific to their counseling role. The current study utilized simultaneous regression and Pearson correlation analyses to examine the relationships between supervision type, frequency, supervisory working alliance, burnout and coping in professional school counselors. Participants included 99 PSCs who completed an online survey of questionnaires and scales to assess for supervision type, frequency, working alliance, burnout and coping resources. The results most prominently indicate that regardless of type of supervision those PSCs who receive supervision most frequently have greater coping resources than those who do not. The findings also indicate that PSCs who receive clinical and administrative supervision experience low personal accomplishment as an aspect of burnout. However, those receiving peer supervision have high personal accomplishment, which is consistent with prior research findings. A key implication of these findings is that considerations for workload responsibilities of school counselors should include time for and access to alternate forms of supervision such as peer and clinical in addition to administrative supervision