Solution Focused Practice in Schools: 80 Ideas and Strategies

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

Foreword

About the Authors

Preface

Acknowledgments

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

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