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:
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.
Foreword
About the Authors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part 1: Introduction to Solution Focused Practice;
Part 2: How will we know we are at our best? Conversations with whole classes;
13. Introduction: involving students;
14. Inviting students to step into their ‘best version’;
15. Being specific makes actions more accessible and possible;
16. The perspectives of others;
17. How do you keep students thinking and looking?;
18. Using scales;
19. How do we record these discussions?;
20. Five minute versions;
21. Talking with a whole class when there has been a difficulty;
22. Variations of scales in the classroom;
23. Creating opportunities for appreciation in the classroom
Part 3: Individual work;
24. Introduction: principles;
25. Getting started: building a common direction;
26. Building virtual pathways to success;
27. Resource-based discussions;
28. Using scales;
29. Creative scales
30. Other ways of moving a conversation in a constructive direction
31. When there has been a set-back
32. Confidence
33. Motivation
34. Anxiety
35. Giving advice
36. The enquiring mind: facilitating peer conversations
37. Differing 5 minute conversation frameworks around a specific issue
Part 4: Coaching, consultations and meetings
Coaching conversations with staff
38. Key considerations
39. Focusing on what is wanted
40. Amplifying current successes and future opportunities
41. A 5 minute coaching conversation
42. How do coaches get better at coaching?
Consultations with groups of staff
43. Using scales to support consultations over time
44. Locating what is working and making it stronger
Meetings with parents and other professionals
45. Basic meeting structure
46. Establishing the Best Hopes from the meeting
47. Finding a starting point through parental aspirations
48. What if the student is not at the meeting?
49. Clarifying priorities: multiple scaling
50. When things are tough
51. Pupil progress meetings and beyond
Meetings around organisational development
52. Linking visions, policies and practice
53. Locating and building on strengths
Part 5: Working with groups around specific issues
54. Introduction: structure of sessions
Group work with students
55. Mobilising resources and useful qualities
56. Establishing ‘ground rules’ for the group
57. Supporting forward-looking conversations
58. Using a scale
59. Questions are the best form of advice
60. Follow up sessions
61. Points of practice to bear in mind
62. Group mediation
Parent groups
63. Starting and finishing from a position of strength
64. Exploring what parents want
65. Being at our best
66. Advice giving
Part 6: The lower primary age
67. Noticing and naming
68. Keeping good things going; 69. Co-creating pictures of success: children as experts
70. Other ideas to help scaffold ‘noticing’ and ‘doing’
71. Stepping into the world of imagination
72. One-to-one conversations
Part 7: Case example of individual work: Christiana
73. Transcript
74. How are reputations formed, maintained and changed?
Part 8: Solution Focus in Zanzibar: a case study
75. Stay open to differences!
76. Where do you position yourself and how do you get started?
77. Data gathering phase
78. Final meeting and report
79. What happened next?
80. What did we learn?
Index
"In this marvellous new book, Ajmal and Ratner teach us, in their own words, that "It is only the wearer of the shoe who knows where it is comfortable". Through providing the basics of the solution focused approach and using it with individuals, groups, staff members and teachers, the reader will gain true insight into how schools can work using solution focused practice. The dialogues that are included offer rich, specific examples of how school counsellors, teachers and head teachers can engage and relate to students dealing with a variety of concerns. Educators who often wonder if they can make a difference with a troubled student need to read this book, which will finally provide them with ideas and strategies for asking questions that elicit teacher and student driven solutions, which are always the best kind!"
- Linda Metcalf, author of Counseling Toward Solutions and Director of Graduate Counseling Programs and School Counseling at Texas Wesleyan University, USA
"This is an invaluable, inspiring and accessible guide for all teachers, from trainee to experienced, in responding effectively to the challenging situations encountered with individual children, groups and whole classes. The book is evidence-based and grounded in practice. It offers practical approaches that go beyond problem solving to enable pupils to recognise, own and sustain their "best selves". The process of co-constructing desired futures and achievable steps is illustrated through numerous case study examples. These studies highlight the impact of open questioning and scaffolded dialogue in building positive attitudes and relationships for learning and for life."
- Sue Ellis, Professional Tutor and Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL Institute of Education, UK