ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the necessity to understand the wider historical, political, and organizational context in which supervision and its issues. Supervision is a reflective space for a number of professional issues. Words like "supervision", which seem neutral for one profession, are highly charged in another. Trainers in supervision have to be aware of the differing emphases and culture about how the supervisor is seen: that is a facilitator, educator, mentor, or coach. One of the challenges of supervision training is development of the skills needed to create the reflective space. The supervisor might be required to be another kind of teacher, enabling the trainee or novice practitioner to become more skilled, knowledgeable, and confident. Through training a range of professionals, it is clear that effective supervision across disciplines can take place at master practitioner level, because the role of the supervisor, at that stage, is facilitative rather than educative.
