Narrative Therapy

Stephen Powell provides an interesting summary of Russell Bishop's keynote at the Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning. Bishop drew on the findings of his research on Maori students in New Zealand schools to highlight the fact that the teacher-student relationship is the single biggest determinant in student achievement.

These findings support the emphasis placed on the teacher-learner relationship in his book, Culture Counts, where Bishop suggests the counselling approach narrative therapy (not to be confused with narrative theory) as a useful model for building supportive teacher-pupil relationships. (Narrative therapy is also an approach Jane Gilbert believes is useful for developing students' identities with respect to science.)

Rather disturbingly, Bishop's findings are at odds with teachers' opinions which hold that students and home circumstances are most critical. A question asked by Powell illustrates this point:

If pupils ‘bunk off lessons’ do we use a discourse that describes this as in some way deviant behaviour or do we use a discourse that questions the relevance of lessons and the relationship between pupils and their teachers?

This lack of alignment represents a barrier to meaningful change and Bishop has identified critical reflection as a strategy to reposition teachers' discourse away from the pupil.