Solution Focused Practice in Schools: 80 Ideas and Strategies

Description

Solution Focused Practice is a change-focused approach to enabling people of all ages to make progress in their lives by emphasising what is wanted in the future, amplifying successes and highlighting the capacities and skills available to support progress.

Grounded in the reality of the day-to-day challenges of school life, Solution Focused Practice in Schools: 80 Ideas and Strategies offers dynamic, practical, down-to-earth and jargon-free applications of the Solution Focused (SF) approach that can create energy and movement in even the toughest of situations.

From working with individuals to considering organisational developments, this book explores the SF approach using numerous examples and sample questions that can be adapted for any situation and whether the time available is long or short.

The reader will gain ideas about how to

• Move beyond ‘don’t know’ responses in individual discussions with students to create dialogues where difference and change can occur
• Invite classes into constructive conversations about building the classroom environment that brings out the best in students, whether there has been a concern or not
• Address key issues such as confidence, motivation, resilience and dealing with set-backs
• Build detail around potential and effective futures in coaching, consultations and meetings
• Support the development of policies and procedures at an organisational level
• Support solution-based conversations using play, role play, video and other creative techniques.

This book is an excellent resource for managers, teachers, SENCOs, mentors, counsellors, coaches, psychologists, social workers and all those who work in a supportive capacity in schools to promote the learning and well-being of both students and staff.

Table of Contents

1. Foreword
2. About the Authors
3. Preface
4.  Acknowledgments
5.   Part 1: Introduction to Solution Focused Practice
   1. What is Solution Focused Practice (SFP)?
   2. A brief background
   3. Summary of practice
   4. Fundamental SF skills
   5. Solution building is not the same as problem solving
   6. Key SF questions
   7. Scales: denoting the progress already made
   8. Dealing with ‘don’t know’
   9. Adapting SFP to work in schools
   10. Summary of SFP in schools
   11. Research and literature on SFP
   12. How to get going … and how to keep going;
6. Part 2: How will we know we are at our best? Conversations with whole classes
   1. Introduction: involving students
   2. Inviting students to step into their ‘best version’
   3. Being specific makes actions more accessible and possible
   4. The perspectives of others
   5. How do you keep students thinking and looking?
   6. Using scales
   7. How do we record these discussions?
   8. Five minute versions
   9. Talking with a whole class when there has been a difficulty
   10. Variations of scales in the classroom
   11. Creating opportunities for appreciation in the classroom
7.  Part 3: Individual work
   1. Introduction: principles
   2. Getting started: building a common direction
   3. Building virtual pathways to success
   4. Resource-based discussions
   5. Sing scales
   6. Creative scales
   7. Other ways of moving a conversation in a constructive direction
   8. When there has been a set-back
   9. Confidence
   10. Motivation
   11. Anxiety
   12. Giving advice
   13. The enquiring mind: facilitating peer conversations
   14. Differing 5 minute conversation frameworks around a specific issue
8.  Part 4: Coaching, consultations and meetings;
   1. Key considerations
   2. Focusing on what is wanted
   3. Amplifying current successes and future opportunities
   4. A 5 minute coaching conversation
   5. How do coaches get better at coaching?;
   6. Using scales to support consultations over time
   7. Locating what is working and making it stronger
   8. Basic meeting structure
   9. Establishing the Best Hopes from the meeting
   10. Finding a starting point through parental aspirations
   11. What if the student is not at the meeting?
   12. Clarifying priorities: multiple scaling
   13. When things are tough
   14. Pupil progress meetings and beyond
   15. Linking visions, policies and practice
   16. Locating and building on strength
9.   Part 5: Working with groups around specific issues
   1. Introduction: structure of sessions
   2. Mobilising resources and useful qualities
   3. Establishing ‘ground rules’ for the group
   4.  Supporting forward-looking conversations
   5. Using a scale
   6. Questions are the best form of advice
   7. Follow up sessions
   8. Points of practice to bear in mind
   9. Group mediation;  Parent groups
   10. Starting and finishing from a position of strength
   11. Exploring what parents want
   12. Being at our best
   13. Advice giving
10. Part 6: The lower primary age;
    1. Noticing and naming
    2. Keeping good things going
    3. Co-creating pictures of success: children as experts
    4. Other ideas to help scaffold ‘noticing’ and ‘doing’;
    5. Stepping into the world of imagination
    6. One-to-one conversations
11. Part 7: Case example of individual work: Christiana;
    1. Transcript
    2. How are reputations formed, maintained and changed?
12.  Part 8: Solution Focus in Zanzibar: a case study;
    1. Stay open to differences!
    2. Where do you position yourself and how do you get started?;
    3. Data gathering phase
    4. Final meeting and report
    5. What happened next?
    6. What did we learn?
13. Index

Author Description

Yasmin Ajmal is a former primary teacher and educational psychologist. She is now self-employed as a Solution Focused coach, trainer and educational consultant.

Harvey Ratner is a founder member of BRIEF, established in 1989 to deliver therapy, coaching and training in the Solution Focused approach. He works as a therapist and coach at BRIEF and in schools.