A Systemic Approach to School-Based Consultation: Combining Interventions That Belong to Different Theoretical Traditions

This chapter illustrates the idea that a systems perspective can encompass any idea that helps increase our understanding and effectiveness. An underlaying assumption is that the adoption of a systems perspective encourages—even requires—the possession of a plurality of theories and instruments because of the extremely complex nature of dynamic systems. The authors describe a real-life, school-based intervention that combines a normative approach (Marte Meo), with a non-normative perspective (Coordination Meetings), and how the interventions, derived from different philosophical and theoretical traditions, have been included within a single systems-oriented framework.