ABSTRACT
As noted in the introduction, this book is designed as a guide for student advocates (school counselors, school psychologists, school social workers, school administrators, teachers, parents, students, and other community members) interested in promoting student and school community strengths via future forming and lifescaping actions directed toward cultivating learning power and well-being in schools, organizations, and communities. Lifescaping and future forming move research away from being a descriptive summary or trying to be a mirror of reality toward action research becoming an engaged creative and continuous process directed toward making schools, organizations, and communities better places for living and learning. The content in this text orients readers to strengthsbased eco-relational change practices to be implemented in school communities. Strengths-based practices in the schools is an approach that builds on strengths rather than attempting merely to minimize deficits and
problems (e.g., Galassi & Akos, 2007). Eco-relational change is a term that merges ecological counseling (Conyne & Cook, 2004) with the relational insights being forwarded in social constructionist psychology and deep ecology philosophy (e.g., Gergen, 2009; Naess, 2002; Spretnak, 2011). Eco-relational change is concerned with the complex ecologies where we exist and enhancing the relationships in those ecologies that promote connection, belongingness, integrity, compassion, and human potential.
