Self, identity, adolescence and the professionalisation of school counselling in New Zealand: a Foucauldian-inspired approach

Abstract

This thesis provides a broad-brushed critical account of the development of the school counselling profession in New Zealand secondary schools from 1960-1999. Different forms of analysis, inspired by Michel Foucault -- problematising the present, archaeology, genealogy, power/knowledge, the Panoptican and 'the gaze', and governmentality -- have been applied in forms of philosophical critique and analysis, critical history, a chronicle of events, an analysis of policies and processes, and various forms of textual critique. 'Critical history' provides a means for examining the conditions that established the nature, limits and realities of school counselling, the constitution of adolescence, and the context of the school within the neoliberal educational policy environment in New Zealand from the late 1980s onwards. The notion of narrative –– its analysis and its theoretical importance -- interweaves the themes of the thesis. The thesis is divided into two major sections, which revolve around the notions of 'identity' and 'self'. The first section examines changing notions of the self and identity and of 'adolescence' or 'youth'; how the discourses of both psychology and sociology have conceptualised adolescence/youth; and how youth were morally constituted in the 1950s' as the immediate social context for the 'birth' of guidance counselling in New Zealand. The second section provides a narrative of the development and changes in the school counselling profession in New Zealand, examined in Foucauldian terms. Government policy after 1996 resulted in some threats to the place of counselling within schools. The neoliberal education policy regime and new managerialism, with its new demands for professional accountability and performance management, form an important part of this story. The extensive part that the counselling organisation New Zealand Counselling and Guidance Association (NZCGA) and then New Zealand Association of Counsellors (NZAC) has played in professionalisation and the process of ethical self-regulation are central to this thesis. The notion of narrative in the social sciences and the impact of some Foucauldian thought in narrative therapy -- a counselling therapy that developed in Australasia for family counselling and is now applied to school counselling -- is examined. The thesis concludes with an epilogue that looks at some directions for the future.