Solution Focused
I say these words “solution focused” a lot in my every day life as a teacher. Being solution focused is something that has been challenging over the past year. However, it is paramount to moving forward.
Solution focused practice concentrates on helping children move towards the future that they want and to learn what can be done differently by using their existing skills, strategies and ideas, rather than focusing on the problem.
The solution-focused approach seems to be one that children and young people find easy to access, non-stigmatising and useful. In my teaching career I have found using scaling questions invite the child to talk about what is going well and the many exceptions and instances they may have forgotten to notice, as well as small signs of progress. Sometimes constructing a tangible scale across the floor so that the child can physically move along it is useful as it becomes much more visual. For children I like to keep the top end of the scale, the child’s best hopes, as a cluster of sparkling possibilities, and the bottom of the scale as simply ‘the opposite’. This gives many more opportunities for small signs of progress to be noticed rather than tying progress down too tightly. Scales remain flexible, which is important.
Children and young people are responsive to and therefore able to engage in this way of talking. Children do not generally respond well to conversations in which ‘problem talk’ is dominant. It can be uncomfortable, restrictive or just uninteresting to them, especially if an adult is identifying the problems. However, talking about strengths and resources, about the future and about small successes is a different way of talking that also, as Therese Steiner says, connects with how children think and see the world: ‘After all, the solution-focused approach fits very well with the way children think about and view the world. I have never met a child who liked to talk about problems. When you observe small children, how they solve little everyday problems goes along the predictable pattern of trial and error. They always look ahead, and they almost never sit down and analyse the difficulties in order to come up with a solution. The longer I thought about these characteristics, the more it became clear to me that being solution focused paralleled a child’s way of being in the world.’
This quote is something that is instilled in my every day teaching at Cargilfield, creating a positive and fun, yet thoughtful environment for children to thrive in and ultimately shapes our future…whatever that may be!
Posted on