The self as a bounded container

Looking to the whole - people in community

The dialogical self

The post-modern self

What is it to be human?

Human beings as self- contained unitary individuals who carry their uniqueness deep inside themselves.

Humans can only be understood as members of a wider community. Individuality is socially based.

Human's lives are characterized by the ongoing conversations and dialogues they carry out in the course of their everyday activities.

Identity is formed and re-formed by constantly unfolding desire realised, although never fully, through multiple forms of lifestyle practice.

Self and others

Individual and society are separate realms.

Humans are always in social relationships from the moment they are born and they remain part of a network of other people throughout their lives 

Selves are formed in interaction with others. Individual and society are two sides of the same coin.

Human beings consists of physiology and linguistic practices; our sense of identity (and personal history) arises out of culturally available narrative forms

Practice orientation

Practitioners  look to what is inside the individual.

Practitioners focus on the whole and look to the individual as an aspect of that.

The most important thing about people is not what is contained within them, but what transpires between them

Practitioners look to discourse and the stories that people can and do tell.

The educational focus

Educators seek to develop the individual as independent and autonomous. They have a concern for self-development 

Educators look to develop the capacity of the community as a whole. Individual development is significant only in so far as it contributes to communal advancement

Educators look to people in relation. They seek to open up and deepen conversation and the conditions that underpin it.  

Educators seek to encourage playfulness and engagement with different ways of telling stories about lives.