IJSP Number 4, 2022

7 unique supervisory challenges and requires high levels of supervisor multicultural competency [6]. Clinical supervision ideally is as an “educative process by which and through which we as supervisors strive to embrace, empower, and emancipate the therapeutic potential of the supervisees with whom we have the privilege to work ” [7, p. 193]. Although supervision is often thought as a safe space for facilitating supervisees ’ personal and professional growth, over half of supervisees have reported experiencing harmful supervision [8, 9]. The potential damage caused by ineffective clinical supervision may be even more consequential for international trainees, evidenced by the fact that international trainees seldom receive culturally- informed clinical supervision [8]. Supervisors ’ lack of multicultural knowledge [8, 10]; and supervisees ’ direct experience of microaggressions, racism, and prejudice from their supervisors [11, 12, 13] are problematic supervision realities that have been reported in the literature. Unfortunately, supervision literature about international supervisees remains scarce [4], and empirical research is even rarer [14]. It is also noted that clinical supervision is not directly developed based on the experiences of international trainees/ students [15, 16]. In fact, most clinical work and supervision are centralized on colonial ways wherein the impact of globalization and the discussions regarding power differentials are unfortunately neglected [1, 17]. The need to fill this international supervisee/supervision research void, we contend, could not be more pressing. Because clinical supervision with international trainees is a relatively new topic to emerge, this study utilized a qualitative open-ended survey questions to gather data [18, 19]. There are several advantages of using such an approach: open-ended survey questions (a) can motivate participants to freely express personal thoughts, emotions, and responses to major events in supervision in their own words; (b) can permit a sufficient amount of time for international supervisees to reflect on their experiences and respond to the prompts which is likely to facilitate more in-depth qualitative data; (c) can help identify specific supervision interventions that are perceived as helpful/ effective or harmful/ ineffective within a natural context [20]; and (d) can allow international supervisees to describe their personal experiences in writing without steering the direction into predefined themes of researchers, thus avoiding experimenter bias [21]. 2. Conceptual Framework for Clinical Supervision In our study, clinical supervision experiences of international trainees were explored through (1) cultural dyad [22, 23]; (2) multicultural competencies of the supervisor [8, 10]; and (3) power and power differential in supervision [24]. We believe understanding the cultural dyad between supervisor-supervisee is a vital first step to inform the clinical supervision process with international trainees [22, 23]. In a dyad where the supervisee is at a more advanced racial/ethnic identity stage than their supervisor (i.e., regressive dyad), the supervisor is likely to minimize or dismiss international trainees ’ expressions of cultural concerns [23]. Perhaps, color-evasion attitudes (e.g., “international supervisees are ident ical to the U.S. supervisees ” ) or power-evasion comments (e.g., “international supervisees are