A Discourse Analysis of School Counseling Supervisory E‐Mail

Abstract

This article is a discourse analysis of weekly computer‐mediated communications between 8 school counseling interns and their e‐mail supervisor over a 16‐week semester. Course‐required e‐mail supervision was provided as an adjunct to traditional face‐to‐face individual and group supervision. School counselor supervisees and supervisor enacted 3 discursive strategies (repetition, labeling, and plural pronoun usage), which were observed to contribute to supervisee professional identity development. Findings are discussed in light of both the counselor education and discourse analysis literatures. Implications for practice and future research are provided.