supervision
Pluralsupervisions (some meanings)
- 1The act or process of watching over and directing a person, activity, or task as it is carried out.
Patients starting the new medication require careful medical supervision.
The contractor provided constant on-site supervision throughout the renovation.
Similaroversight, monitoring, control, guidance, management
Note
Hands-on watching is at the heart of this use, and it most often sits in a fixed frame: under someone's supervision, as in under his parents' supervision or under medical supervision. The word comes from Latin supervisiō. It is uncountable here, so one needs or provides supervision, not a supervision. When the weight falls on accountability rather than on watching, the word shades into responsible oversight.
- 2Oversight exercised by someone who bears responsibility for a person, organization, or activity.
The agency exercises supervision over all banks operating in the state.
After the scandal, the charity was placed under the supervision of an independent board.
Similaroversight, control, charge, regulation
- 3A small-group tutorial session in which an individual student or a few students meet with an academic for focused teaching.
She spent the morning preparing for her weekly supervision on medieval history at her Cambridge college.
Cambridge undergraduates typically attend two or three supervisions each week during term.
Similartutorial
Note
Cambridge's own name for the small-group teaching session: one to three students sit with a senior academic or graduate student and discuss their written work. At Oxford the same thing is called a tutorial. Unlike the act of supervising, this sense is countable. Undergraduates attend two or three supervisions a week and prepare for each one.
Practice
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Origin
The word comes from Latin "supervisiō".