Case studies and lessons learned

In researching this project we heard so many inspiring stories and learnings from the field.  The diversity of the field education experiences means that supervisors are constantly being challenged and needing to reflect on what happened; what they did well; what didn’t go so well; and what they would do differently next time.

The following are stories from the field.  In light of confidentiality all identifying information has been deleted and in some cases stories combined to highlight the key learnings; all names and locations have been changed to ensure security.

However they are grounded in reality.

The following is a simple reflection template that helped supervisors tell their story.   You or your student can use it to unpack and reflect on your experience and tell your story. It is simply:

  • What happened?
  • What are the key considerations that fall out of what happened?
  • What worked in terms of your supervision?
  • What didn’t work in terms of your supervision?
  • What would you do differently next time or what did you learn?

To help you unpack your situation use the Key questions for Decision Making model, Crane (2012) and The inclusive model of decision-making (Chenoweth and McAuliffe 2012).  Both provide useful prompting questions that will help you to probe deeper into situations and identify the learning.  Find the links and outline in the Complexity section.

Although these stories are all based on real supervision experience they are not intended to be the “best practice” examples or give you the ‘correct’ answers.   They are intended to share the ways other supervisors have approached situations and what they found useful learning.  Through sharing insights we might pick up some handy hints.

We invite you to add your own stories, insights and challenges.  Send them in and we will  (respecting confidentiality) add them to the site over time.  The more we share our stories of supervision the more practice wisdom will emerge and ‘good practice’ shared.  This ‘good practice’ will benefit those students and supervisors who are interested in maximising the learning.

These are the stories of supervisors in the field.

In this section we cover:

Mental Health
Disability
Racism
Boundary issues
Bullying
Personal issues that are impacting on placement
Struggling to keep up
Already ‘knows it all’