ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a pilot project in group field consultation undertaken by the School of Social Work at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto, Ontario. Field education in social work has long relied on a primary model of field instruction that places individual students with individual field instructors, with a faculty field consultant/liaison usually assigned through the school. Early developments in social work supervision in both agencies and schools of social work paralleled early professional progress in that a psychoanalytical/casework model became a central feature of the supervision structure. The 1950s and 1960s saw a shift in emphasis in social work supervision toward a multiplicity of supervisory components: institutional, methodological, psychological, and educational. The educational component of supervision, although acknowledged from the beginning of social work history, also took on a greater emphasis in the 1970s.
