SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION: DISCURSIVE PERSPECTIVE TOWARDS SUPERVISION

2010.05.07.

Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION: DISCURSIVE PERSPECTIVE TOWARDS SUPERVISION

INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION: BENEFIT AND CHALLENGES OF FIELD PLACEMENT SUPERVISION

Rasa Naujanienė

LAYOUT

• Historical outlook• Our days supervision• Looking for personal way of

supervisor practice


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What is a supervision?

• Literally, the word supervision means to “oversee the actions or work of a person” (Freeth, 2001).

• It derives from the Latin super “over“ and “videre” to watch, to see” (Kadushin, 1976, 19).


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“An educational process in which a person with a certain equipment of knowledge and skill takes responsibility for training a person with less equipment” (Robinson, 1936, 53).


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Social Work Supervision


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Is as old as social work exists.

Its development has been shaped by (1) practice environment and (2) the process of social work

professionalization.

Historical outlook


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• Origins are generally argued to be administrative - Charity movements of late 19th century. Persons, who supervised distribution of charity were named as a Supervisors.

Historical outlook


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•Educational focus developed between 1910’s to 1920’s when social work education moved from industry to Universities.

•The integration of psychoanalytic theory supported the development of supervision’s educational focus; especially case work practice in social work and supervision became traditionally case analysis.

Historical outlook


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• In 1950’s to 1970’s the emphasis of psychoanalytic theory shifted supervisory focus from the work to worker. The understanding that a social worker by itself is the main instrument for intervention.

Historical outlook


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• Since late 1970’s accountability (possibility to give explanation for one’s action) together with personal support have been a dominant themes in social work supervision literature.

• New insights into the supervisory context. Not only agency but dynamic interaction among client, worker, supervisor and agency systems at the personal and social levels.

Historical outlook


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• Since 1980’s the contextual supervision approach provides a framework through which the reflective conversation can examine, deconstruct and reconstruct client’s, supervisee’s and supervisor’s and agencies narratives within parties of social realities.

Trends in supervision

• All methods found spase in supervision– Psychotherapy

– Gestalt supervizija

– Supervision based on Psychodrama

– Constructive supervision


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Modern trends

• Supervision found necessity to separate supervision from therapy.

• Supervisor is defined as active consultant in working with probelms coming from professional work field.


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Nowadays supervision (Kessel, 2002):


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• is a complex method handled by well-trained supervisors who can apply supervision as a method to further the competence of self-reflection of professional workers and for leadership in different sectors of service and labor.

• Supervisors do their work in different settings, at different system levels and in different organizational contexts.

Nowadays supervision


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• has separated itself from practice training and from work/task oriented guiding in organizations.

• Supervision as a professional service, has no unambiguous meaning, which depends on historical and contextual influences, and on the choice of particular paradigmatic views (Kessel, 2002).

Nowadays supervision


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• is a method of consultation of professional performance.

• During supervision person reflect his/her practice and have abilities to evaluate his/her performance within organization.

• Develop multidimensional capability to conceive professional situations and consciously use yourself as instrument of intervention.

Why do we need supervision?

• There are many wrong solution in work. It happens because many reasons:

• Inaccurate information (klaidinga informacija) or inaccurate understanding of information (klaidingas informacijos apdorojimas)

• Personal characteristics (asmeninės žmonių ypatybės).


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Why do we need supervision?

• Not ability to find strategies or not seeing possibilities how to apply them (neradimas strategijų arba neradimas galimybių kaip jas pritaikyti)

• Interconection in various power relations (Susisaistymas su įvairiausiomis galiomis) and other.


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Supervision is a dialog. Dialog which occur not accidently, not in chatting with friends in cafe, not in meeting social worker with client and not in employee meeting with boss.


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Supervision is a dialog which occurs in the formal occasions:• Supervisee meeting with supervisor. That is called – individual supervision. • Group of employees as supervisee (usually from different organizations) meeting with supervisor. That is called – group supervision.• Team of employees as supervisee (usually from one organization) meeting with supervisor. That is called – team supervision.

Supervision is asking questions and looking for answers.


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Supervision as dialog not means giving-getting advice.

Dialog considers sharing experiences in work placements among supervisees, but not only.

It considers getting emotional support, but not only.

Supervision as a strategic dialog


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Dialog about supervisee job situations and development of plan, strategic plan how to move forward in work activities that:

To work more effectively,To feel better in work life.


• It doesn’t matter in which area person works (social work, education, health care and etc.), the employee needs talker (pašnekovo) with whom he/she could challenge own solutions in work (kvestionuoti savo sprendimus).

• Good work and good solutions could be made only in that case if there is possibility to put a question-marks (kelti klaustukus) at the institutional level.

• These question-marks relates with supervision perspective, where questions are analyzed in complexity (Bernd Jansen, 2010).


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It needs time to develop:

• plan to move forward

• competence to reflect practical situation

• to become self-reflective for ability to develop strategic plans not only during supervision sessions.

What is theoretical background of supervision as a dialog?


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At first it is eclectic background.

In that point supervision theory is very close with social work theory.

Dialog presume interaction.

Origins of social constructionism

• Symbolic interactionism’ (Mead 1934)

• Ethnomethodology (since 1950)

• Phenomenology philosophy (Husserl 1975) and Schütz (1962-6)


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Assumptions for discursive approach on social work and supervision

• Social work as well as supervision is a socially constructed activities.

• The way we talk about our practice is actually part of our practice (Hawkins et al. 2001).


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Key assumptions in social constructionism

• Reality is a social construct which is an effect of social processes through which people ‘come to describe, explain or […] account for the world including themselves in which they live’ (Gergen 2003, 15).


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Key themes in social constructionism

• A critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge.

• Language. Language as a form of social action.• Multiplicity. A focus on interaction, social

practices and on processes.• Context. Historical and cultural specifity of

knowledge


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Language

• Language is one interaction and it is actually the main kind through which people construct what it is considered “truth” at any given moment.

• We need to study language in order to study anything at all (de Shazer 1993, 84).


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Multiplicity

• The idea that social constructionism is an ongoing process which occurs through interaction prompts an idea that these shared and “negotiated” understandings about “reality” could take on a wide variety of forms.

• It leads to an assumption that numerous possible “social constructions” dependent on time and place of the world could be considered. Each different construction relates with a different kind of action by a human being (Parton & Marshall 1998, 241).


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Context

• Social constructionists “share the view that context organizes meaning” (Gubrium & Holstein 1999, 291).

• They argue that the ways in which people commonly understand the world and the categories and concepts they use to explain the world are historically and culturally specific (Burr 1995, 3-4).


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AČIŪ UŽ DĖMESĮ! / THANK YOU!


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KVIETIMASĮ SUPERVIZORIŲ IR KOUČERIŲ RENGIMO

PROGRAMĄ2010-2012 metai

Besidominčius prašome kreiptis tel.: 8686 30573; 8 (37) 327846 arba registruotis iki š.m. rugsėjo 10 d. arba el.paštu: [email protected]

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION: DISCURSIVE PERSPECTIVE TOWARDS SUPERVISION

Documents

supervision rasa naujanien2010

social worker

discursive perspective

social levels

word supervision

parties of social realities

case work practice

s accountability possibility