Building professional capital: Development of supervision competencies in Trainee Educational Psychologists for application in future practice.

Training of Educational Psychologists in the UK includes teaching on aspects of supervision to understand the underlying theory and process but does not address the development of supervision competencies (Gibbs et al., 2016). All applied psychologists are required to be able to supervise across professions on completion of training (HCPC, 2015). Addressing supervision competencies as part of the curriculum creates the opportunity to understand the complexity of supervision theory, skills and practice in depth, preparing trainees to take up their professional role with a comprehensive understanding of supervision and its application in practice. Supervision competencies are central to the development of leadership skills, professional peer support, effective collaboration and joint working across a wide variety of clients and contexts. A joint initiative was undertaken by tutors of the University of Strathclyde and University of Dundee Masters programmes to explore the development of supervision skills for trainees. Existing aspects of the curriculum were considered in terms of relevance to supervision through an audit of individual modular content and many areas were seen to contribute. Reflection and discussion on current teaching and learning practices led to the identification of areas for curricular development and assessment of trainee competencies. The idea of incorporating a framework of supervisory competencies (Dunsmuir and Leadbetter, 2010) in the training of Educational Psychologists; the piloting of a self-efficacy tool; and their future application will be presented and discussed in the workshop.