Everyday Solution-Focused Recursion: When Family Therapy Faculty, Supervisors, Researchers, Students, and Clients Play Well Together

Abstract

In academic clinical programs, a constant challenge is to transform the 'hardening of the categories,' that is, relational patterns keeping teachers, supervisors, researchers, students, and clients in traditional roles that support isolation, conflict, and disengagement. As with most educational organizations, we in our Department of Family Therapy (DFT) at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, historically followed this pattern dutifully carrying out our work well within our faculty, administration, and student identities. We did so because that was the way we were taught and we certainly had success in doing so too. At the same time, we realized our clear-cut boundaries limited our creativity and perhaps our effectiveness. Maybe when you teach too much as a faculty member, you forget how to learn. Maybe if you learn all the time as a student, you do not learn how to teach. Possibly if you only practice therapy, you never gain an appreciation for research and if you only conduct clinical research, you may never advance as a therapist. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)