Behaviors of ACPE Candidates Leading to Certification as

Associate Supervisors

Judith R. Ragsdale, M.Div., Ph.D.ACPE Supervisor

May 8, 2015

This study seeks to further develop a theory

for providing quality ACPE Supervisory Education

The Need for a Theory for Providing Quality

ACPE Supervisory Education

• Certified based on competence supervising Level I and Level II CPE students

• Another level of certification – currently impractical

Research Method

• Grounded Theory • Data collected via interview• Interview question• Analysis • Saturation• Member check • Current place in analysis

Coding Team

• Charles Orme-Rogers• Johnny Bush• Rod Seeger• Sheryl Lyndes Stowman• Judy Ragsdale

Results

• Study Participants

• Identified 15 key behaviors

• Behaviors are not in the order of importance or chronology

• Many of the behaviors are woven in the Candidate’s materials, DVD, and committee appearance

Key Behavior 1

The Candidate describes CPE students with such detail that the students seem to be in the room

Key Behavior 1

• Describing specific work with CPE student and the impact on student’s care for a specific patient

• Describe process of CPE student, verbatim, patient encounters of student

• Materials describe not just the CPE students, but the people the students minister to

• Candidate's impact seen in change in CPE student behavior from advice-giving to reflecting together

Quote on Specific Descriptions“It’s amazing how, in materials I have read as a supervisor and as a commissioner, people are general in their description. They’re not specific. And they tell people what they’ve done; they don’t show.”

“They have to obtain the delicious details of the encounter…It’s like bringing me into the experience with them.”

The Candidate sees and describes underlying dynamics informed by emotional awareness and theoretical understanding

Key Behavior 2

Key Behavior 2

•Recognizes relationship patterns and dynamics quickly

•Candidate unpacks a dynamic, for instance by saying, “Here's what happened, here's why, here's what my best self would have done”

•Talks about how complex power dynamics - context and relational - serve and hinder supervision

The Candidate guides CPE students to access their affective selves so that the CPE student learns to respond to the affective self of the patient

Key Behavior 3

Key Behavior 3

• Teaches students to work with own emotions triggered in patient care

• Helps students reflect on emotion in moment and impact on patient care

• Helps student understand how what's going on with self impacts relationship with patients

• Helps student understand parallel process between student and patient occurs naturally, and how to work with it

The Candidate helps CPE students claim their own cultures, religions, ethnicities in order to improve their spiritual care

Key Behavior 4

Key Behavior 4

• Learns about students' theologies• Makes racial and cultural dynamics part of

supervision• Works with religious conservatives and liberals

with attention to the different perspectives serving their learning

• Respects the student's world view; guides the CPE student to provide spiritual care respectful of the patient’s world view

Quote on Respecting the Student's World View

“I would want the Candidate to be helping their students to become much more aware, conscious of the ways in which their world view impacts the manner in which they do spiritual care, especially if they’re in the majority religion.”

The Candidate focuses on helping students acquire professional pastoral identity, competence, and integration resulting in high quality pastoral care

Key Behavior 5

Key Behavior 5• Guides student to bring new learning about self into ministry

practice

• Observes student’s pastoral care behavior and offer feedback about specific behavior

• Helps CPE students see how integration of their personal and faith histories increases the effectiveness of their ministry with others

• Written materials, DVD, conversation focus on CPE students’ learning, not healing

• Helps students articulate what they want to learn in context of CPE outcomes, processes

• Refers to the student's learning goals regularly in the course of supervision

Quote on Guiding CPE Student to Bring New Self Awareness into

Ministry Practice

“I might say, ‘You gave an elegant description of the student’s psychodynamic process and that helped me gain some real insight into the student and the struggles he or she had in the learning process. But I was interested in hearing how that insight helped you to supervise their practice of ministry.’”

Quote on Guiding CPE Student to Bring New Self Awareness into

Ministry Practice

“I think some of us can get distracted and sort of absorbed in the psychological or the sociological but the bottom line is, is the CPE student developing his or her pastoral identity? Is the CPE student developing his or her competency as a spiritual caregiver?

Frankly, a lot of Candidates have a hard time articulating that at the Associate level.”

The Candidate assesses CPE student's learning needs, gifts and challenges for pastoral care through the lenses of the Candidate’s theories

Key Behavior 6

Key Behavior 6

• Uses theory concepts specifically to assess what the students’ learning needs are and to craft appropriate interventions

• Shifts approach based on assessment in response to opportunity presented in the moment

• Tells how she/he assesses the CPE student when own lens is from one world view and student’s lens is from another world view

Quote on Evaluations of CPE Students

“I’ll be looking at the Candidate’s evaluation of the CPE students in terms of whether the Candidate identifies their strengths…their growing edges. Does the Candidate really point out, in terms of evaluating a student’s care giving, where they see the strengths and growing edges?”

The Candidate facilitates the CPE student group’s ability to explore its own observed behavior

Key Behavior 7

Key Behavior 7

• Guides group in CPE practices of process and reflection based on group theory

• Creates atmosphere of trust informed by understanding of students

• Group engages in connected conversation and if not, the Candidate brings them back

• Identifies own emotions, self-supervises, references theory, facilitates all students participating

• Intentional progression of interventions, change in supervisory stance, as unit proceeds

Quote on Group Facilitation

“The DVD needs to demonstrate:

•the beginning and the ending of the particular group so that I can see that the Candidate is attending to the formation of that particular session…

•an active but not controlling participation of the Candidate…

•that they have some awareness of the group process and they’re not practicing individual supervision in the group process…”

The Candidate uses theory in her/his own way rather than just understanding concepts

Key Behavior 8

Key Behavior 8• Explains theory in terms understandable to a third

grader• Applies concepts to diverse situations, able to

amend when not working• Describes limits one has experienced in one's

theory along with back-up plan• Generates options based on theory• What is happening in the room corresponds with

theory identified as one guiding practice• Explains every aspect of curriculum in terms of

each theory

Quote on Showing Use of Theory

“If their writing style or something like that has been something that has put me off a little bit, when I watch the video, more often than not, it’ll come together for me what this person has been talking about. I’ll be able to see their theory in their DVD and in the commentary on the DVD…that usually has been something that has sort of raised their stock.”

The Candidate makes connections for students between what the student is being asked to do, the goals of CPE, and the student’s own goals

Key Behavior 9

Key Behavior 9

• Candidate helps new students understand and use CPE

• Gives specific examples of program processes designed to meet Level I and II outcomes

• Gears curriculum and teaching toward level and type of group

The Candidate describes how her/his understanding of her/his own strengths, limits, triggers, personal history and culture inform and hinder supervision

Key Behavior 10

Key Behavior 10

• Candidate talks about how own and students' emotions impact and inform her/his supervision

• Candidate describes being triggered by a student, working with own emotions while also considering options in supervision

• Evaluates own feelings, pain, reactivity to assess how to care for self so can focus on students

• Candidate has a process for working with her/his own issues as they are evoked

Key Behavior 10

• Uses own story rather than reacting out of it• Knows who is hard to supervise and how to

address that within oneself• In an impasse, Candidate asks, “What part of

this difficulty is about me?”• Works with own stuck places so can be available

for group

The Candidate develops a supervisory relationship that teaches, models, witnesses, empowers the CPE student to do work of pastoral care and interior terrain work

Key Behavior 11

Key Behavior 11

• Builds alliance with their students out of a compassionate engagement around learning

• Sets limits with students; teaching boundaries• Appreciates students, invites rather than acts

upon• Guides students toward their inner knowledge as

opposed to pushing knowledge into them• Listens well to students as a way of teaching

students to listen well to patients

Key Behavior 11

• Teaches students skill sets - listening, crisis care, ability to hold conflict

• Gives students freedom to make mistakes• Teaches students to do own self-supervision• Invites CPE students to be curious and explore

behavior observed by self, Candidate, or peers

Quote on Supervisory Relationship

“The Candidate focused on what she had learned about herself, how that fit with her own theoretical frameworks and how those frameworks helped her understand her own internal dynamics….she said:

‘Having gone through this myself gave me some empathy and insight into my student with whom I had some real tension and conflict. Here’s how I used my own self, my own identity, and how I used my theoretical frameworks to build, you know, a stronger supervisory alliance with the student.’”

The Candidate takes responsibility to focus on certification in the Committee, not seek supervision

Key Behavior 12

Key Behavior 12• Manages anxiety enough to talk about own supervision• Knows how to and is able to stop the process to reflect in

committee• Sits forward, makes eye contact, has open posture; uses

body language that communicates engagement• Interacts relationally with committee members in

responding to questions• Description of theory use and self understanding

mirrored in group DVD and in conversation with committee

• Transparent with the committee about recent life events

Key Behavior 12• Connects whatever's happening in the committee to

supervision of students• Relates with an attitude of mutual inquiry rather than

defensive, controlling• Works with individual and group dynamics in the

committee• Engages the Committee in conversation; this is the

responsibility of the Candidate • Here and now - being very present to the moment

Quote on Committee Appearance

“If a Candidate can engage around learning issues in the committee comfortably and take a new idea and pull it up alongside their own theory, and you can kind of see the critical purchase piece happening right there in the committee, that’s very powerful…that’s what you have to do with students…So, if they can do it in a committee with another supervisor, then I’m assuming they will be engaged in doing that with their CPE students as well.”

The Candidate shows confidence to take a risk in supervising, reflect on how it worked, and discuss it in committee

Key Behavior 13

Key Behavior 13

• Locus of authority for the Candidate is often themselves, their experience

• Claims authority while respecting the authority of another; i.e., “I do see how my theory worked; at the same time, I can see how, from your perspective, you don't see that.”

Quote on Supervisory Authority

“In sort of like a counterintuitive way, some of being able to demonstrate supervisory authority is being able to talk about what you don’t know and where you struggle and where you’re ambiguous as well as what you do know and what is working.

And I think to do that in a group can be very empowering for the Candidate and also empowering for the student.”

The Candidate fluidly, flexibly draws on dimensions of theory, practice, life story, faith, and respect for diversity to supervise and to describe her/his supervision

Key Behavior 14

Key Behavior 14

• Candidate's description of theory use and self understanding mirrored in group DVD

• Develops personal and professional integration in the service of supporting the supervisory relationship and not getting in the way of relationship

• Reflects by being self-critical about the Candidate’s own work while also identifying what they're good at

Key Behavior 14

• Easily moves between theory and practice; i.e., offers examples of one's supervision informed by theory, or the theory informing practice

• Easily accesses both feeling and thinking; i.e., describes own thinking and feeling about whatever is being addressed in the moment

Quote on Respect for Religious Diversity

“Can the Candidate enter into the world, the liberal Candidate, can they enter into the world of a fundamentalist student and help them articulate a theology at the bedside that is appropriate for them, rather than imposing a more liberal relational point of view upon them?

Can they use the student’s own meaning making abilities and their rules for meaning making in a way that helps them relate to the other?”

Quote on Integrated Supervision

“And I would want them to, in their analysis of that group, to be able to say,

‘When so and so said this, it really touched me deeply and it moved me to a place that - it angered me, and I had to really supervise myself and I had to make use of my theory in order to respond in this way to this person, to this student. And then, I had to go back and reflect upon this.’”

The Candidate understands his/her development as a Supervisor is an on-going process

Key Behavior 15

Key Behavior 15

• Describes how her/his supervisory approach is evolving based on work with theory, and on learning from relationship dynamics with students

• Describes hearing constructive criticism or challenge, making sense of it for self, using it

Limitations

• Behaviors are hard to describe in a way that captures animation – the spirit breathing life into the practice

• Certain questions were not addressed – how Candidates include multicultural

humility material in their curricula– how Candidates help CPE students learn

to provide pastoral care for a wide variety of faith traditions and practices

Implications

• High bar for Associate certification • Focus SES educational processes on

developing, practicing these behaviors • Help Candidates shift the focus from

themselves to their students• Apply self-awareness to practice of

ministry (CPE students) and supervision (Candidates)

Thanks…!

• To the Certification Commissioners who participated so generously in this study.

• To Rod, Johnny, Sheryl and Chuck for their wonderful work coding and discussing what we were all seeing in these interviews.

• To Bill Scrivener, Sr. Director of Pastoral Care at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, for supporting this research and the time it requires.

Questions? Comments?

Thank you too

for your interest and attention!