Radical Constructivism: An approach to facilitating change

By Darren Shaw MBPsS

Hi my name is Darren Shaw, I am a practitioner of applied psychology with a particular interest in the factors that contribute towards a ‘healthy’ functioning mind and personal development applications of evidence-based coaching approaches. I have been trained in a range of approaches, all of which have demonstrated benefits as well as fundamental flaws in the process of facilitating individuals towards achieving their stated goals. In the year prior to writing this article, I spent 12 months focused solely on reaching my own conclusions about how change occurs and how a changeworker can be more effective at inducing a change in those we seek to help.

It’s a man named John Seymour that first gave me the idea of looking at changework/coaching as being primarily a ‘radical constructivist’ approach. Radical constructivism is the idea that individuals generate their own perception of reality, as reality itself is impossible to access and know objectively. Radical constructivism also shows that when a perception of reality no longer works, the individual then seeks to update their perception of reality in order to make their perception fit, thereby producing improved results in whatever the learning context may be.

My approach to working with clients is to allow them to come to their own realisations about the best goals for them to focus on, avoiding suggestions other than possibly pointing at aspects of their beliefs or behaviours that may not be useful in producing positive outcomes. I do this not by stating my beliefs or judgement around the belief or behaviour, but by asking the person about particular beliefs/behaviours that may not be supporting their journey towards achieving the goal they have in mind.

Often clients state that they ‘do not know’ what their goal is, which is unfortunate and a logical fallacy from a psychological sciences perspective, as all behaviour is goal-orientated and has some survival purpose that may not be accessible by the conscious mind, but nonetheless exist. If a person does not know what their goal is, then the goal becomes ‘to know what to want’, after which the coach can facilitate a conversation about the person’s beliefs around their ability to make a conscious choice about what they do actually want, maybe by asking the person if they have ever known what they want, or ask if they want to be standing/sitting where they are right now, finding ways to help them see that they DO know what they want, in the present moment, because they are doing it, so the matter of considering the future is a matter of noticing just how much choice there is in every given moment and deciding to be flexible enough to try at least one path, maybe one that stretches them in ways they haven’t yet been challenged.

The more you lead a client to construct their own perception of reality, based on the understanding that it is them that is continually doing this, like it or not. the more you can start to appreciate the nature of the radical constructivist position.

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive article on the answer to everything, but aspects of what I have written should point to the idea that your client has all the resources they need to succeed, and your role should maybe be to help them realise this for themselves.

www.thedarrenshaw.co.uk