title: Scaffolding a community of competent practitioners: positioning and agency in a training program for narrative counseling.
abstract: This article explores the scaffolding of learning experiences in a postgraduate program in New Zealand that offers training in narrative counseling. The authors draw on positioning theory to identify student shifts in learning, and in agency, that help build an increasingly skilled and peer-generated context for learning. We describe a selection of exercises and one key assignment, introduced in the course in a particular order, that we believe enable students to step into positions of agency which ultimately allow a competent community of learner-practitioners to emerge. We also describe a dance of positioning for ourselves as teachers in this program. We suggest that, at any given time, our own positioning is tied up with possibilities for student positioning. Acknowledging relationships of power in classrooms, we explore ways to align poststructuralist counseling practices and the teaching of these practices.
authors.affiliation: Social Practice, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand. hgremillion@unitec.ac.nz
authors.forename: Helen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gremillion
authors.forename: Aileen
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cheshire
authors.forename: Dorothea
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lewis
mesh_terms: D003376:Counseling / Q000193:education*; D004500:Education, Graduate / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D033262:Narration; D009520:New Zealand; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'; D011584:Psychology / Q000193:education*; D013334:Students; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods