Classroom and Group Extension of Family Systems Concepts

The focus of this article is the extension of family systems concepts into the classroom as well as into educational, support, and counseling groups held in schools for family members. Family systems concepts and methods can be used to pursue goals in both the cognitive/academic and affective/social domains. The article begins with information on the extension of family systems perspectives into the academic worlds of curriculum and then instruction. Those discussions are followed by information on techniques, including metaphor and retraining, as they relate to family systems concepts. The article concludes with a section on socialization, which discusses in detail a family systems method called temperature reading.

ACADEMIC CURRICULUM

This part initially focuses on Satir's (1988) five communication stances, which are characterizations of human behavior. Four of the five are dysfunctional; the last is a functional, congruent stance. Information on these stances could be considered a curriculum content area in its own right, and family members might also benefit from the information. Further, understanding the stances can help school professionals in networking, making referrals to groups, as well as in counseling families. In other words, school professionals should be familiar with the stances and how the knowledge can help them when interacting with at-risk and special-needs students and their families. Following this discussion a new focus is engaged-concerns of parents about new and controversial curricula that are being considered or have been implemented in the school

An understanding of communication stances (Satir, 1988) can help school professionals to refine their personal communication styles so that they present a single-level, congruent message. Professionals can also use knowledge about the stances to identity dysfunctional communication in the schools and then to intervene to help others recognize incongruent communication and begin to use congruent communication. Satir (1983b, 1988) provided many examples of ways in which trained professionals can help others recognize and change their communication stances so that they are congruent most of the time.

This section provides a brief background on Satir's communication stances, describes each of the five stances, and provides examples of the use of communication stances as a curricular area for students. The discussion then turns to the implementation of such a curriculum with suggestions given for exploring personal communication stances and ways to respond to the stances of students and family members