ABSTRACT
David: For myself, a strengths-based approach is related to Tom Andersen’s perspective on keeping people in conversation by allowing them to maintain their integrity, allowing openness for new awareness, growth, and change to be the ultimate purpose. Andersen’s ideas are connected to Goolishian and Anderson’s (1988) view of clinicians as master conversationalists whose goal is to facilitate conversation long enough for problems to dissolve. In this way, my goal is to keep students and supervisees in conversation long enough to find their way to asset-or strength-oriented self-understandings. To facilitate such conversations I have found value in Andersen’s emphasis on respecting students/supervisees’ sense of integrity. I find supporting students/supervisees’ development in this way integrates seamlessly into my overall social constructionist view of learning as a co-constructed process of meaning that truly is without end. If I can facilitate students’ understanding of their own strengths, or assets, I trust that when they leave the classroom or supervisory meeting their increased awareness will act as seeds for further growth that will take place in the students’ own time and pace.
