What could be found in a Therapeutic Education program?

Remember:

■ Relationships are central to the whole process.

■ There is not a simple solution approach to teaching and learning.

■ Educators are not just ‘deliverers of curriculum’.

■ Educators’ humanity and professional skills are an integral part of the process.

■ Therapeutic education approaches recognize the essential humanity of both educator and learner.

■ Therapeutic approaches involve all areas of the curriculum and the social environment of school.

Table 1 summarizes possible teaching and learning strategies. They are ideas to be developed according to an educator’s and learner’s needs. It is intended to trigger thoughts about where and how developments can take place in individual schools.

Key issues

■ Behavior is never just behavior (good or bad); there are always reasons for behavior.

■ Learners cannot always articulate those reasons and often they may not even be aware of them.

■ This is why it is hard to change learners’ behavior and it will involve a learning process, the triangle of awareness, where thoughts, feelings and behavior are all important.

■ Understanding the basis of a therapeutic approach to education can open up ways in which schools can be effective in reducing the impact of disaffected and disruptive learners as well as providing a healthy educational culture that will also minimize the problems for individual learners themselves.

■ Behavior cannot be divorced from its underlying thoughts and feelings.

■ The triangle of awareness is vital throughout this area of work, because behavior does not occur without a good reason. The good reason may only exist in the mind of the learner whose behavior is being looked at, but to them the reasons are good and worthwhile, whatever anyone else thinks. This notion needs to be grasped before problem solving can commence.

■ Remember acting on behavior out of context and without an effort to understand the nature of the behavior is usually a recipe for failure for all concerned, especially the learner.