IJSP Number 6, 2024

8 supervisors understandably often lack such a solid conviction, greatly struggle to define a rudimentary sense of supervisor identity, and wrestle with that most basic of questions: “Who am I as a supervisor?” [4, 5, 6]. Becoming able to definitively answer that question is regarded as sine qua non for the instigation of any successful supervisor development process [1, 7]. As with developing a sense of therapist/supervisee identity, we also contend that developing a sense of supervisor identity is, at its core, a transformative learning process that can best be understood via a transformative learning lens. However, transformative learning theory [8, 9, 10] has not been applied to apprehending the supervisor development process. We subsequently extrapolate and extend our earlier supervisee/ transformative learning proposals [11, 12, 13] to supervisor development. Our extrapolated and extended foundational contentions are these: (a) supervisor identity development is a transformative learning process, which (akin to therapist/supervisee development [11, 12, 13]) involves tensions of disruption and construction, disorientation and development, and reflection and reorganization; and (b) transformative learning theory provides a fruitful educational perspective by which the transformative nature of supervisor identity development can be understood. Supervisor identity refers to that fundamental constellation of self-as-supervisor beliefs and convictions that (a) define one’s own views about supervisory approach, philosophy, values, style, and effectiveness of practice and (b) provides direction for one’s supervisory conceptualization and conduct [cf. 12]. We use Hoggan’s [14] definition of transformative learning going forward: “processes that result in significant and irreversible changes in the way a person experiences, conceptualizes and interacts with the world” (p. 71). That definition gives weight to a host of developmentally transformative possibilities that can occur (e.g., perspectival, identity transformations, epistemological, ontological; [14, 15]. We wish to specifically consider those processes that result in significant and irreversible changes in the way a beginning supervisor experiences, conceptualizes, and interacts with the ‘supervision world’ (after Hoggan; [14, 15]). 2. USING TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING THEORY AS AN INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORK Transformative learning theory, first emerging in the late 1970s [16, 17]), has been widely lauded and that continues to be the case, with such descriptors as the following being applied: “seminal” and “robust” [18, p. 49], “definitive framework” [19, p. 120], “detailed theoretical foundation” [14, p. 57], “great staying power” [20, p. 816], the new andragogy [21], “most researched theory” and “most drawn upon adult education theory” [22, p. 666]. This ever-evolving, increasingly international theory [23] began with a first wave focus on cognition/rationality, having advanced to now include a second wave focus on