Counsellor clients as insider experts in a school community
Pizzini, Nigel; Gremillion, Helen
Date
2017-11-13Link to ePress publication:
http://www.unitec.ac.nz/epress/index.php/counsellor-clients-as-insider-experts-in-a-school-community/Citation:
Pizzini, N. and Gremillion, H. (2017). Counsellor Clients as Insider Experts in a School Community. (Unitec ePress Occasional and Discussion Paper Series 2017/8). Auckland, New Zealand. Unitec ePress. ISSN 2324-3635 Retrieved from http://www.unitec.ac.nz/epress.Permanent link to Research Bank record:
https://hdl.handle.net/10652/3980Abstract
This paper describes a practice developed at a large secondary school in Auckland whereby students’ experiences of overcoming problems are made available to others in the form of insider brochures. These students are thus able to share their insights and strategies in support of peers who may be experiencing similar problems. Drawing on narrative counselling conversations as well as narrative community work, a school counsellor facilitates the process. This paper describes how insider voices contribute to the brochures, and provides detail from one case example. In keeping with narrative approaches to problems, the goals are to de-privatise and de-individualise young people’s experiences of difficulties, and to reposition these students from ‘sufferers’ of problems to ‘experts’ on how to overcome them. In the process not only are students’ preferred identities developed, but also collective knowledge is created and students are empowered to support one another.
Keywords:
Auckland, New Zealand, secondary schools, peer-to-peer counselling, counselling, narratives of strengths, narrative counselling, insider brochuresANZSRC Field of Research:
130106 Secondary Education, 130305 Educational CounsellingCopyright Holder:
Unitec ePressCopyright Notice:
Counsellor Clients as Insider Experts in a School Community by Nigel Pizzini and Helen Gremillion is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International LicenseORCID Author Profiles
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