Supervision practices in school counsellor education: A comparison across two countries

Abstract

Supervision is an essential part of school counsellor education training, particularly during internship and practicum experiences, as it plays a crucial role in assisting counsellor trainees in adapting to their new roles and identities. While essential to the profession, supervision literature lacks comparison studies across countries, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of whether, and to what extent, supervision is being effectively practised cross-nationally. In the current study, authors utilized a multisite analytic approach as a form of case study method to investigate similarities and differences in counsellor educators’ school counselling supervision practices in the US and Türkiye. The study sample included a total of four counsellor education programmes, consisting of two programmes from each country. The results indicated that while counsellor educators in the US pay more attention to crisis management, suicide assessment, feedback acceptance, multicultural issues, school counsellor self-care, and mindfulness, their counterparts in Türkiye focus on creating counselling goals, counselling micro-skills, theories, and techniques. The results also provided further support for an independent counsellor education accreditation body that could oversee the supervision practices across counsellor education programmes in Türkiye for a united counsellor training, supervision, and professional counsellor identity.