JCNT - May 2025 Release - Full Release - Flipbook - Page 67
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seemed to capture your imagination, which you just couldn9t seem to put
out of your mind and/or heart? If so, can you speculate as to what it was
about these particular questions/turning points that captured your mind
and/or heart?
2) What did the case story teach you about the 8spirits9 of narrative practice?
How did this 8spirit9 show up in the therapist's practice?
3) As you look back over the past week, by chance, is there anything from the
case stories that has made an appearance in your own practice?
I carefully placed the napkin in my backpack and typed them out into my syllabus
on my flight home from Australia to put this alternative pedagogy to the test. I
put David9s wish to the test in this inaugural class and many other subsequent
classes over the course of the next eleven years. While I have reported on the
initial findings of these ventures in teaching by way of practice stories, the
purpose of this paper is to highlight our quest for a methodological means that
was more befitting of the pedagogical aims of narrative therapy.
With the help of my colleague, Travis Heath (who has also been teaching by way
of practice stories and inviting students and participants of his workshops to
answer the questions outlined above), we have gathered a total of 96 reflections
from students across classroom and workshop teaching formats.
What is a practice story in narrative therapy?
Before I elaborate on our search for a befitting methodology for narrative
practice, what does David Epston mean when he says practice stories? David has
been writing such stories since his very first paper on narrative therapy called