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Description
The authors present a practical set of guidelines for school counselors interested in initiating and using narrative leagues after a small group experience ends. A case example demonstrates how a narrative league can help students to maintain new skills or behaviors.
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Group counseling is a valuable approach in the school environment (Whiston & Sexton, 1998), and group interventions have been noted to promote learning (Goodnough & Lee, 2004). Although there are several advantages for using group counseling with students, such as instilling hope (Berg, Landreth, & Fall, 2006), there is one significant drawback. Researchers often have concluded that the learning occurring during small groups or even prevention programs dissipates shortly after exposure to the group or program has ended (Belcher & Shinitzky, 1998; Gilvarry, 2000). The formation of narrative leagues may offer an approach for addressing the erosion of benefits from group experiences. By recruiting an audience to support the desired behavior outside of the group, narrative leagues offer a unique, practical way to maintain and strengthen learning long after the group has ended.
THE NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE
The narrative approach is based on the idea that people live their lives according to the stories they believe about themselves and the situations in their lives. People are not the sole creators of their stories; they are influenced by experiences, school and work environments, family and societal values, and many other situations or local institutions (Winslade & Monk, 1999). The continuous process of giving stories shape and meaning is played out in a social context (Gergen, 1991). Story development requires a "storyteller" and an audience or group to hear the story and provide recognition and feedback to the storyteller. Central to the narrative perspective is that the audience is an active, collaborative, and vital participant in the process of meaning making, rather than a passive recipient of information (Bruner, 1986).
Narrative Leagues
In order for a new story (e.g., appropriate behavior) to remain vibrant and develop significance in a student's life, that story needs to take root in the context of an audience, not just in the mind of the student. As Winslade and Monk (1999) described, "a story isn't a story unless it finds an appreciative audience" (p. 96). Narrative leagues provide an expanded audience that can be... |
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