Best Practices in Assessment & Evaluation in Supervision
PrintThis article is a written transcript of the course, “Best Practices in Assessment & Evaluation in Supervision”, presented by Carol Dudding, Ph.D. on June 6, 2011.
>> Amy Hansen: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this week's virtual conference on topics in supervision. We're very honored to have Carol Dudding joining us as our guest editor this week as well as our presenter for today. So our Expert e-Seminar today is entitled, “Best Practices in Assessment and Evaluation in Supervision”. At this time I am very pleased to introduce Carol Dudding. Carol Dudding is Director of Clinical Education and Assistant Professor at James Madison University. She is also the Principal Investigator and Program Director of an online Master's Degree program in speech-language pathology and a project exploring the use of telepractice in the public schools. Carol has published and presented internationally and nationally on the topics of clinical education and supervision, telepractice and e-supervision and online learning. So welcome Carol and thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today.
[Applause]
>> Carol: Well, thank you. And welcome to everyone. I appreciate you spending your time with me this afternoon and today as Amy mentioned we're going to be talking about Best Practices in Assessment and Evaluation in Supervision. So there is a lot to go over and hopefully we'll make the best use of the time that we have together. And my assumption here is that many, if not all of you, have some experience in supervision because this is meant to be more of an intermediate course. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to use the Q and A box that Amy discussed. All right. Let's move on then to get to the content.
Roles of Supervisor
All right. I would like for you again to think about your role of supervisor.
I love this picture here because it does remind us that when we take on the role of supervisor, no matter who it is we're supervising, we indeed wear many hats. The role that comes to mind most frequently is that of a teacher. We feel that we as professionals are somehow teaching and carrying on the information that we've learned through our lifelong learning as professionals and teaching other people that information. But then again, those of us who have been supervisors are well aware that we're also counselors; sometimes surprisingly to the degree that we have to do that but we often find ourselves being counselors in one form or the other. Like it or not, realizing we are role models, as well, for our supervisees. I encourage you to think back through your clinical training, who your supervisors were in your early years and how, indeed, they did serve as a role model for you.
Some of us may be finding ourselves in the role of administrator and that is where our assessment and evaluation responsibilities come into play. Hopefully many of you have had the opportunity to serve as a mentor and/or be mentored by someone else. It is a very rewarding relationship that we enjoy as part of supervision. And sometimes as the role of supervisor we're just being a colleague or there is an area and we've been asked to help provide some supervision in a particular situation or circumstance. And then the one I have here - and the one that we're going to be talking about today - is that of an evaluator or assessor as being one of the roles of supervision. And Amy mentioned in my bio that I'm at James Madison University in the clinic and so I spend much of my recent years supervising graduate clinicians and working with off-campus supervisors on that. Prior to this life I worked in healthcare for a number of years and I found I was an evaluator of co-workers and other employees both within the SLP and other professionals. So I found myself in that role and I'll have to be honest with you folks that this particular role of supervisor is not always one that I enjoy and/or relish and so some of you might have that similar feeling and hopefully today some of the information that I can share with you will help make the process at least more comfortable for you and the people that you are evaluating and supervising. And again I'm going to keep plugging this week's worth of SpeechPathology.com events.
What is Meant by Assessment and Evaluation?
So let me start by I'll be using the terms assessment and evaluation today. And so we'll start off with definitions. Some folks really like those.
When we're talking about assessment what we're considering, or what I'm talking about today, is that process of gathering data and information analyzing it and putting it back in a report format. This kind of information, this process, is going to help us determine whether or not the intended outcomes are being achieved. Whether or not someone or the person being evaluated has met certain criteria. Now, we all do that. We do that constantly with our colleagues, with our supervisees and certainly with the patients and clients that we see. But when we take that information and we move it a little bit further and we use that evaluation in helping us make decisions about maintaining, changing or discarding a practice and/or assigning worth and value, then we're talking about evaluation and when we talk about things like raises and promotions, maintaining someone's employment, we really are talking about evaluation. And again that information and those decisions hopefully are being made as a result of a very thorough assessment process. Okay. So I've spent some time telling you the differences between those terms but I'll now tell you that throughout the rest of this presentation I will be using them somewhat interchangeably.
Who do you Evaluate/Assess?
Okay. So now I would like some information from you folks. I believe there are 64 of us here. So who do you evaluate and who do you assess? How many of you - give me a green thumbs up if you supervise - if you're responsible for the evaluation and/or assessment of graduate students. My assumption is many of you are in multiple areas so we have quite a few of us doing that. How about clinical fellows? Okay. Good. Good. Other SLPs? Okay. How many folks out there are responsible for the evaluation or assessment of paraprofessionals? Okay. Not quite as many. We just have 10 of us out there who are doing that. I've been in the position where I was responsible for the assessment and evaluation of other professionals such as OTs and PTs and other practicing professionals. How about you? How many have that response or have had that responsibility as well? Did I miss someone that you're responsible for or evaluation or assessment of? Okay. So it looks like the majority of us have been involved with the supervision, evaluation and assessment of graduate students, a fair number with clinical fellows and then the other ones seem to be about evenly balanced.
Well, in red here on the slide what you'll see is to keep in mind - I'm sure you all are very aware - that the requirements for evaluation and assessment and, indeed, supervision vary according to who it is that you're evaluating and assessing, where you are evaluating and assessing and what setting you happen to be in. So how many folks here are currently now in a public school setting? Thumbs up. Okay. I think we're not getting the full response from everybody because just 12 thumbs up. Okay. All right. So how many folks that are with us today are currently in a healthcare setting? Okay. So we have 15 again we're not getting everyone's responses. How about private practice? Okay. All right. So it looks like again the people who have responded – we are about 50/50 public school, 50/50 healthcare setting. Knowing our field, many of us have been in multiple settings across our careers. And it looks like again that we - not the majority of us – have had experience evaluating graduate students and clinical fellows and then we kind of divide down on the other areas.
ASHA Resources
So some resources for you. ASHA resources, there is an Ad-Hoc Committee Report on Supervision. This is really a very nice document because it has the knowledge and skills required for a supervisor in evaluating the growth of a supervisee. This is where you can go if you're looking for information on the expectations and knowledge and skills related to your role as a supervisor, and evaluating others. The Ad-hoc Committee Report on Supervision is a great place to go.
Also for those of you involved with evaluation and assessment of the clinical fellow we have a very nice document again provided to us from ASHA. It is called the Clinical Fellowship Skills Inventory. This is actually a formal evaluation and assessment measure that is required when you're working with...
