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Couples Work in Cultural Context: Te Ao Māori and Poststucturalist Practices Informing Counselor Training in Aotearoa New Zealand
Author(s) -
Connor Helene,
Gremillion Helen,
Meima Yolanda
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
family process
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.011
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1545-5300
pISSN - 0014-7370
DOI - 10.1111/famp.12210
Subject(s) - aotearoa , pedagogy , indigenous , general partnership , context (archaeology) , curriculum , narrative , sociology , tokenism , psychology , gender studies , anthropology , political science , linguistics , ecology , paleontology , philosophy , law , biology
This article outlines key themes that appear in the teaching of poststructuralist ideas and practices for couples counseling within the Postgraduate Diploma in Counseling Program at Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand, and it explores the congruence of this pedagogical approach with Māori (indigenous) understandings of relationality, collaboration, and partnership. The diploma program's curriculum includes narrative therapy and relational language‐making. Themes explored in this article include: understanding (heterosexual) couple relationships as contextualized entities, deconstructing dominant discourses of coupledom, and the positioning of counselors/teachers as nonexpert. Taking each theme in turn, the authors, one of them Māori and two Pākehā (European), articulate points of alignment with Māori cultural concepts and practices.