Assignment: Bernard’s Discrimination Model

Supervision is a vital component of counselor training. Guidance and feedback from a counselor educator and supervisor can help build and strengthen skills and confidence in relation to understanding and preventing vicarious trauma. Supervisees may feel less intimidated and more inclined to discuss their feelings and thoughts related to vicarious trauma if a supervisor promotes a safe atmosphere to do so. There are many models of supervision, and as a future counselor, counselor educator, and supervisor, you may subscribe to one or more of those models. For this application you focus on Bernard’s Discrimination Model and apply it to vicarious trauma education in supervision.

After reviewing the Model in this week’s Learning Resources, consider each of the three roles within Bernard’s Discrimination Model and how you might incorporate the topic of vicarious trauma into each role as a counselor supervisor. In order to help you contextualize your response, consider example interactions related to vicarious trauma that could occur between a supervisor and supervisee within each role.

The assignment (1–3 pages)

• Briefly describe each of the three roles in Bernard’s Discrimination Model (teacher/educator, consultant, and counselor).
• Explain how and when good supervisors attend to vicarious trauma in these roles.
• Explain how you, as a supervisee, should respond to a supervisor acting in each of those three roles.