EXAMINING A MODEL OF EVOLUTIONARY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMIC CHANGE WITHIN EXISTING SOCIETAL SYSTEMS

Within today's emerging global society, educational systemic change is a dynamic, complex process that must seek to engage active participation of all stakeholders. This article examines alternative models of this process, providing different perspectives of the recursive and comprehensive nature of change when viewed from the vantage points of those stakeholders within the process. An envisioned school or educational system that addresses preparation of a citizenry dedicated to democratic principles and issues of social justice must consciously examine the relationships, that form and reform interconnecting and unifying diverse subsystems within the school's constructed meaning and purpose.     

Creating a Participant Text: Writing,Multiple Voices,Narrative Multiplicity

This article uses the ideas of social constructionism to explore how families change by investigating the way our perceptions of ourselves in relation to others are formed through language. The idea that language has the inherent potential to generate a reply has strongly influenced our thinking. We propose that the reply to others is shaped by our initial reply to ourselves in inner conversation. Interaction moves back and forth from inner conversation to conversation with others, from monologue to dialogue, becoming the “stuff” of new narratives. The particular focus on language in this article is on how adding writing to the session conversation produces a “participant text,” a therapeutic narrative that is composed of the voices of the family and the therapists. These voices, often newly discovered or invented, allow our narrative discourse to expand and multiply. Using this approach with individuals, couples, and families from different socioeconomic levels, we have worked with mourning, divorcing couples, recovery from abuse, marital conflict, parenting dilemmas, and physical illness.     

Rape Flashbacks: Constructing a New Narrative

This article offers an approach to the dissolution of rape flashbacks when the usual treatment of talk and group support doesn't work. The client, with her family, constructs a new rape scenario to replace her abusive story. In the new story, the client introduces a chosen protective figure into the flashback, which has the effect of interrupting the old scenario so that it cannot take place in the same way again. This approach relies on the client finding a new or freed voice in the treatment conversations in order to tell her story differently. The new, repopulated story eventually has the effect of altering her memory and renewing her life direction and belief in herself.     

Feed-Forward: Future Questions, Future Maps

"Feed-forward" is a technique that encourages families to imagine the pattern of their relationships at some future point in time. Questions about the future, in conjunction with positive connotation, put families in a metaposition to their own dilemmas and thus facilitate change by opening up new solutions for old problems.     

Family Themes: Transmission and Transformation

This article describes a method for doing therapy that uses multisystemic themes that combine meaning and action to facilitate therapeutic change. By identifying central themes that operate at the individual, dyadic, triadic, whole family, inter-generational, and sociocultural levels, the therapist is able to develop effective interview questions and design useful interventions. In this method, behavioral symptoms are framed as a current manifestation of an overarching theme. This orientation enables family and therapist to de-pathologize symptoms and work collaboratively toward change. Case examples from a wide variety of families with differing presenting problems, interactional patterns, three-generational histories, and cultural backgrounds, illustrate the efficacy of the method.     

Staging Reciprocal Metaphors in a Couples Group

This paper describes an approach to couples therapy based on defining the reciprocal positions of each spouse in relation to a central theme. These positions and the theme around which they are organized are crystallized into visible forms through staged metaphors. When studied in relation to one another, the metaphors provide a holistic view of the relationship and are used as an artifice for change.