Distance supervision: Research, findings, and considerations for art therapy

Art therapy internships are arguably one of the most important aspects in the training of future professionals in the field. Many counselors and educators have written about the need for greater links between universities and fieldwork placements (Howey, 1996, Imig and Switzer, 1996, Ishler et al., 1996, Khamis, 2000, Perraton, 2000 and Rahman et al., 2006). Most of the current research on providing distance supervision has been written in education and general counseling journals and usually are examining international uses of supervision (Rahman et al., 2006; Roland et al., 2006). In both education and counseling fields, as in art therapy, the use of the Internet to provide supervision has the similar issues of confidentiality of the clients or students, the ability to observe and provide feedback, and the need to see the student or beginning professional conducting sessions, and the sharing of the session/class products for assessment and review (Burrak, 2008 and Simpson, 2006; Szeftel et al., 2008). In the art therapy field, there have been presentations at national conferences on techniques for distance supervision, but there has yet to be a written research study on the topic. Therefore, this paper will investigate what has been researched and written about in the general counseling and education fields in order to provide a framework of understanding to work within.