EDUCATIONAL INTERVISION: THEORY AND PRACTICE

Teachers are confronted with challenges, which are of individual and organizational character (in classroom, in educational purposes, in groups and institutional structures). Therefore, they need assistance to find solutions in their own context without depending on external experts. Such external counselling often is neither necessary nor helpful in every aspect and any circumstances, because of the biographical and institutional frame of the problem or conflict. Therefore, a method combining individual and organizational aspects of counselling, which recognizes the participants in the problem as the experts of its solution, is helpful. On the other hand free group discussions without a systematic methodical approach have to be avoided. Therefore, a certain training is needed in order to assist groups to work effective and systematically. The following manual for instructing problem-solving peer groups (PSPGs) is developed from own experiences in teacher training in Latvia and Germany. Although there are connections and interdependencies between this model of educational intervision with similar concepts (Balint groups, encounter groups, peer supervision, KoBeSu etc.), it has its special characteristics in the focus on integrating teaching, biographical methods and counselling with the concept of self-actualisation and self-organizing into a program, which is based on the conviction that persons and groups can become subjects of a systematic problem-solving process. Analysing the method of intervision in theory (literature) and practice (in teacher training) can open ways to such assistance without external experts. Background, concept and aim of this special way of counselling, based on the model of Subjective Theories, should invite teacher-groups to make their own experiences. The manual (Appendix) can help teacher-groups to find own methods, rituals and rules regarding their specific situation.