Chiamata a contributi - Call for contribution
The narrative guidance is a new counseling method that aims at the subjects empowerment and it has been defined, in particular, as a "competences training ground " in relation to its capacity of facilitating the development of those competences that were named "life skills" as specifically defined by the WHO (World Health Organization) – thus becoming a reference point for the cross-sectors competences and key competences as they are defined by the European Union and by the correspondent Italian translation.
The "basic core" of life skills includes the following skills and competences:
1. Decision making: a competence helping to face in a constructive way the decisions one has to take in different moments in life.
2. Problem solving: this capacity allows to face the problems in life in a constructive way.
3. Creative thinking: it acts in synergy with the above mentioned competences, enabling the exploration of possible alternative solutions and consequences deriving from doing or not doing certain actions. It helps to look beyond the direct experience and to respond in an adaptive and flexible way to everyday life situations.
4. Critical thinking: it is the ability to objectively analyze the relevant information and experiences. It helps recognizing and evaluating those factors that influence attitudes and behaviors.
5. Effective communication: verbal and non-verbal expression abilities appropriate to cultural environment and different situations: to be able to express opinions and desires, needs and fears and, in case it is necessary, to be able to ask for help and advice.
6. Interpersonal relationship skill: it helps to interact with the others in a positive way, managing to create and keep friendly relationships that can be very relevant both for mental and social health.
7. Self-awareness: that is, recognition of one-self, of one's own nature, of one's own strengths and weaknesses, of one's own desires and intolerances.
8. Empathy: ability to envisage how life can be for someone else even in unfamiliar situations. Feeling empathy can help accepting the "others"; this can help improving social interactions for example in the context of ethnical or cultural differences.
9. Coping with emotions: it involves acknowledging emotions within ourselves and in the others; the awareness of how emotions influence behavior and the capacity of responding to them in an appropriate way.
10. Coping with stress: it consists in recognizing the stress sources in everyday life, in understanding how they "affect" us and thus behaving so as to control different stress levels.
The narrative guidance method has been developing tools which allow to work on guidance competences of people: i.e. to be able to choose, to make projects, to face difficulties, to be able to give meaning and order to actions.
These competences can be useful to people for all their life long in every place and field, from the field of educational training to the professional one and to the existential one tout-court. This method starts taking impulse form different branches of learning as for example form the research in narrative pedagogy, literary theory, cultural psychology, sociology of everyday life, anthropology, neuroscience, narrative medicine, storytelling management.
The narrative guidance is a method of training guidance that can be placed in the context of quality methods as opposed to directive ones, as they are based on the user. Its aim is the empowerment of people, that is to say the development of their skills, picking out their aims and finding resources to reach them. This method overturns the normal counseling methods because it does not enforce changes on the subjects involved, but it aims to develop in the subjects competences to let them be autonomous towards the changes and generally speaking towards the control of their own existence.
The narrative guidance can be translated in an effective way with a continuous process of production of narrative texts, as for example: written and spoken tales, story boards, collages, sequences of photographs, drawings and multimedia products.
The narrative guidance gives answers to some objectives that seem to be indefeasible nowadays and the way the method works to reach them is an economical and very attractive one for the users.
The method is very natural and integrated with the human thought and its first objective is the empowerment of the involved subjects. It is about the experience of the human being in its own uniqueness and historical authenticity so it is destined to be one of the fundamental axis of the pedagogy of these years.
"In a educational system where assessed and certified competences are more and more important, the narrative tools are the basis to help people to see themselves and to narrate themselves while acting, and while understanding the world around them." (form, F. Batini e S. Giusti, L'orientamento narrativo a scuola, Trento, Erikson, 2008).
The method has reached its maturity and so it is ready for an international comparison, that can foster new impulses, new applications and the possibility to build an international community composed by professionals along with the opportunity to use a study and a practice that overcome the cultural and linguistic barriers (the stories).
We think that this method represents an efficient tool to pursue the key competences and to develop the long life guidance and the search of sense.
