Adult learning models have emerged that help social work students to make links between their lived experiences, narratives, and their developing identity as practitioners. This educational methodology involves students exploring and co-constructing their own personal and professional narratives through dialogue, sharing them within a reflecting team format. Reflecting teams emerged out of the work of family therapist Tom Andersen, and have been further developed for practitioner education by narrative therapist, Michael White. A detailed description of the learning model is provided, with an overview of the orienting principles and some guidelines for application. / The educational practice of reflecting processes is examined through a conceptual framework drawing on the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) and Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934). Bakhtin was a literary theorist, philosopher, and teacher who was interested in language, literature and human consciousness, and was fascinated with dialogue in relationship as a site of knowledge construction as well as a model for understanding the dialogic nature of human consciousness. Vygotsky was a psychologist, cultural theorist, and activist who conceptualized learning as a social process that occurs in relationship. He also investigated language as a psychological/cultural tool, and was curious about human consciousness as "inner speech." Their writings act as a theoretical foundation for the dissertation, providing a series of heuristic devices or lenses through which to view reflecting processes: individual/social, self/other, outer word/inner speech, language, monologue/dialogue, and authoritarian/internally persuasive discourse. / The dissertation includes an alternative to traditional academic rhetorical style in the form of conversations between various writers. Drawing on Bakhtin and Vygotsky, a dialogical genre is developed as an approach to engaging with the texts of Andersen and White. In developing this methodology, the dialogic form of inquiry is expressed in a conversation between Bakhtin, Vygotsky and a student persona. This dialogic genre also occurs as an extended series of conversations in the format of a reflecting process between Andersen, White, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and a student, Mishka. The dissertation concludes with an overview of Bakhtin's exploration of moving from monologue to dialogue and from authoritarian to internally persuasive discourse, and how this is accomplished by means of the "penetrated word" and transformative discourse in the context of relationship.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.85021 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Lysack, Michael David |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Educational Studies.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002182657, proquestno: AAINR06321, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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