Abstract (eng)
Training supervision is a learning format which is well established in social work and psycho-therapy and the positive effects of which have been well researched in these fields. It supports students in the development of their own individual (counseling) concept and of a professional attitude. At the same time it ensures the quality of the services offered by the students, especially at the beginning of their training. Despite this long tradition training supervision is only rarely used in e.g. the training of peer writing tutors or mentors at universities, even though it could be assumed that this form of practice-oriented learning is also well suited for this field. In order to be able to soundly discuss this assumption this paper asks the following research question: What role does training supervision play in the competence development of peer writing mentors and in their counseling activities?
The University of Vienna has been training students as peer writing mentors since 2013, en-abling them to conduct writing groups for their mentees. At the beginning of their practice, training supervision is established to support the trainees over the course of one semester. In order to answer the research question I conducted two focus groups with trained writing mentors, using the Documentary Method as a guideline for data evaluation.
The findings show that training supervision “mirrors” the collaborative learning space of the writing mentoring groups, thus enhancing the learning effect and making it more sustainable. In addition, training supervision ensures the quality of the services offered despite the initial lack of experience of the training candidates. The training institution, on the other hand, thus receives feedback on the structural aspects of the training, ensuring sustainable organizational learning. Moreover, training supervision’s strongly subject-centered focus on learning supports the trainees in the development of their personalities and of an individual and well-founded counseling concept. This development can be sustainable even beyond the students’ studies at university. And lastly, training supervision supports the trainees in making explicit their implicit knowledge about writing didactics and the university as an organization, thus contributing to a more sustainable management of knowledge.
These results lead to the conclusion that training supervision plays a crucial role in the com-petence development of writing mentors and considerably supports them in their counseling activities. It is a learning format that is suitable to a university context and puts itself forward for application in similar settings.