Defining coaching supervision: A South African perspective

Abstract

This research was conducted by Coaches and Mentors of South Africa’s (COMENSA) Research Portfolio Committee (RPC) on behalf of the COMENSA board and the COMENSA Supervision Portfolio Committee (SPC). The purpose was to investigate how international and relevant literature defines supervision and how COMENSA might adapt their definition of supervision accordingly. In this way, COMENSA ensures that the definition is based on current research and evidence-based practice. The research design was descriptive in nature—it obtained information concerning the current status of a phenomenon (definitions of supervision) and described “what exists” concerning the phenomenon. Members of the RPC reviewed several academic articles and book chapters and then summarised these in a custom-developed template. The content of these templates was then transferred to ATLAS.ti for coding and thematic analysis. The research highlighted two main concepts related to the definition: The specialised knowledge of a trained supervisor; the end focus of supervision is and must be on the quality of the relationship between coach and coachee, in that the coachee must receive the best possible coaching from the practitioner.