Counsellor clients as insider experts in a school community

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Authors

Pizzini, Nigel
Gremillion, Helen

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Grantor

Date

2017-11-13

Supervisors

Type

Journal Article

Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)

Keyword

Auckland (N.Z.)
secondary schools
peer-to-peer counselling
counselling
narratives of strengths
narrative counselling
insider brochures
New Zealand

Citation

Pizzini, N. and Gremillion, H. (2017). Counsellor clients as insider experts in a school community, Occasional and discussion paper series, 2017(8). ISSN 2324-3635 Retrieved from http://www.unitec.ac.nz/epress.

Abstract

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.

Publisher

Unitec ePress

DOI

Copyright holder

Unitec ePress

Copyright 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 License
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 New Zealand

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