Enhancing professional competence through developmental approaches to supervision

There has been a recent increase in interest in defining and describing the competencies for professional practice in psychology. Perhaps the most important mechanism for enabling the acquisition of competencies is the process of supervision. This article takes the position, based on a review of relevant research in supervision and the author's experiences, that developmental theories of supervision have stimulated considerable research and provide a direction for future work in research and practice. It is argued that the most detailed of these theories, the Integrated Developmental Model, provides a useful framework for understanding how supervisees change over time and how various supervision environments (broadly) and supervision interventions (specifically) can enhance or detract from the development of professional competencies.