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Article Excerpt
The authors investigated the use of student-initiated e-mail as a supplemental modality for supervision. Nineteen students e-mailed their instructors weekly during their 15-week practicum: these e-mails were analyzed across 3 time periods using the categories of the discrimination model (J. M. Bernard, 1979, 1997) and an adaptation of W. Lanning's (1986) professional behavior category. Although patterns of e-mails were similar across time, there was a significant decline in the number of e-mails as the practicum progressed. Significance was found for message focus, with personalization messages and professional behavior/practicum class messages accounting for more than half of the messages across 3 time periods.
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The use of e-mail as a means of communication has moved beyond being commonplace to being normative. Not only has e-mail proven itself to be efficient, it has been described as a method of communication that provides a sense of psychological safety (Zuboff, 1988) not available in person-to-person interactions. This exploratory study attempted to address the potential of e-mail as a supplemental modality for supervision. Specifically, we tracked supervisees' e-mail communications to their practicum instructors using Bernard's (1979, 1997) discrimination model and Lanning's (1986) work. Because one of Bernard's categories is personalization, that is, a focus on the supervisee's intrapersonal reality, the study held some promise of supporting Zuboff's assumption as it applies to supervisees. In other words, should e-mail be found to be compatible with the personalization focus, one explanation could be that the psychological comfort associated with communicating by e-mail encourages supervisees to attend to intrapersonal matters. If this was the case, it would have implications for providing a modality that served to increase reflectivity among supervisees--a goal of training programs that has received significant attention in recent years (Goodyear & Nelson, 1997; Griffith & Frieden, 2000; Koch, Arhar, & Wells, 2000; Neufeldt, 1999; Neufeldt, Karno, & Nelson, 1996). It has long been established that developments in the practice of clinical supervision follow earlier developments in the practice of counseling and therapy (Bernard & Goodyear, 2004; Leddick & Bernard, 1980). Consequently, data from the use of e-mail in counseling can provide insight into e-mail's use in supervision. Although there is evidence that newer technologies have not infiltrated the practice of traditional therapy to any substantial extent (McMinn, Buchanan, Ellens, & Ryan, 1999; VandenBos & Williams, 2000), preliminary results are encouraging, with various studies (Cohen & Kerr, 1998; Lange, van de Ven, Schrieken, & Emmelkamp, 2001; Robinson & Serfaty, 2001) reporting similar outcomes between online therapy and traditional face-to-face therapy.
It seems that the therapeutic alliance also remains intact when conducting online therapy (Cook & Doyle, 2002; Murdoch & Connor-Greene, 2000; Murphy & Mitchell, 1998). In addition, Cook and Doyle found that an empathic relationship could be established whether therapy occurred online or face-to-face; therefore, initial studies seem to indicate that these important prerequisites to productive counseling can be established online, thus adding to the credibility of outcome studies that have reported positive results.
In addition to these studies that report favorable comparisons between e-mail counseling and face-to-face counseling, some authors have argued the advantages of obtaining counseling via e-mail over obtaining counseling via traditional approaches. Barak (1999) suggested that "reading and writing through e-mail may involve a unique personal mechanism that facilitates self-disclosure, ventilation, and externalization of problems and conflicts and that promotes self-awareness" (p. 237). Joinson (1998) asserted that the Internet had a disinhibiting effect on clients, which made it easier for them to express deep feelings. Finfgeld (1999) noted that e-mail communications empowered clients to clarify their problems within their own frame of reference, which in turn allowed their unique ideas to be transmitted in a clear and uninterrupted manner, without the premature interpretations and perspectives of therapists.
Although there is growing evidence that suggests the effectiveness of using e-mail for online counseling, the results should be interpreted and generalized cautiously given the small sample sizes of most studies and the limited information available at this point to determine the efficacy of, and positive therapeutic variables associated with, online counseling. Preliminary results suggest that e-mail is effective in addressing various presenting problems and in establishing a therapeutic alliance. Anecdotal evidence suggests that e-mail offers unique advantages that may be qualitatively different from face-to-face counseling, at least in the short term. Further research is needed in all of these areas. That being said, the evidence to date regarding e-mail and counseling indicates that its efficacy within supervision should be explored.
E-Mail and Teaching
Although the profession's knowledge about the effect of e-mail on the counseling process is limited, more empirical data are available regarding asynchronous communication and teaching. A complete review of e-mail as a distance-learning intervention is beyond the scope of this article; however, it appears that as technology has improved, so have the reactions of students to the use of e-mail as a supplemental pedagogy in their academic courses (e.g., Huff & Edwards, 2001; Romano & Cikanek, 2003). In addition, results have indicated that there are similar advantages, noted in the literature, regarding e-mail and counseling. Specifically, students have reported that e-mail encouraged them to be more thoughtful (Huff & Edwards, 2001), increased both their interest in the class and their awareness of others' attitudes (Romano & Cikanek, 2003), provided quieter students with better opportunities to participate (Huff & Edwards, 2001), and improved their relationship...
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