It’s lonely out here : Maltese state-school counsellors’ experience of supervision

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the supervision experience of state-school counsellors as provided by the Directorate of Student Services. Through the Malta Association for the Counselling profession, seven participants were invited to reflect on this experience and shared their thoughts, emotions and meanings ascribed to it. The research question begged an Interpretative Phenomenological Approach using individual semi-structured interviews. A number of themes communicating the essence of state-school-counsellors’ experience of supervision emerged. These include challenges encountered by state-school-counsellors, conceptualisation of supervision, difficulties coming from absence of supervision; both on personal and professional lives, the Maltese Law on Counselling’s presentation of supervision, high-quality supervision and management of supervision. Each theme has implications for the provision and management of school-school-counsellor supervision, training in supervision and further research. One major implication of this study is that it highlights the need for a structured system of supervision provided as part-of-the-job contract of school counsellors. A number of data-elicited recommendations about such a structure, are presented together with suggestions for future research.