Four Approaches to Using Sandtray in Play Therapy Supervision

Sandtray is an expressive intervention used in play therapy that may also be used to enhance play therapy supervision. This article presents four approaches to using sandtray in play therapy supervision. These approaches include teaching sandtray as an intervention, promoting supervisee self-awareness, case consultation, and group supervision. The authors highlight the purpose of play therapy supervision and present the Integrated Development Model (Stoltenberg & McNeill, 2010) as a way of conceptualizing supervisees' developmental levels. The authors also emphasize the benefits of using sandtray in supervision and the importance of developing competence in sandtray prior to using it in supervision. This article presents a description of how to employ each approach, sample prompts for supervisors to use, and a description of which approaches are the best fit for certain supervisee developmental levels. Each of these approaches has the potential to be a creative and dynamic way to enhance the play therapy supervision process.