Experiences and Innovations in Constructivist Teaching

7th & 8th May 2012

We are pleased to invite you to our third meeting of teachers of constructivist psychology and psychotherapy. Taking as our starting point the hypothesis that ‘ teaching constructivism’ may be easier to construe than ‘being a constructivist teacher’, we are committed to the development of our teaching skills and to creating a ‘community of practice’ among constructivist teachers.

We hope to explore a number of issues together. These include (but are not limited to):

What recent learning points might we share from our teaching practice?

To what extent do our courses reflect innovation and experiment in their methods, content and teaching styles?

How would we characterise our current strengths and future opportunities, both individually and as a network? How might we progress and elaborate these positive aspects?

And what are our weaker areas and development needs? How can we support each other in moving forward in our different schools, and as a European network?

In our initial ECTN ‘manifesto’, we advocated reciprocal dialogue among all those hoping to situate constructivist/constructionist practice in the context of empowering conversation, emancipatory knowledge, challenging the obvious, entering the unknown and transforming perspectives. We hope that by engaging in our meeting in this spirit of inquiry, we will have the opportunity to interrogate and elaborate our practice, and to move further towards developing a specifically constructivist approach to education in psychology and psychotherapy.

VenueThe meeting will be held in the beautiful and historic city of Padua, at the School of Constructivist Psychotherapy. We are hoping for a small group of 10-20 teachers to enable an informal and discursive style of work. While avoiding formal presentations and ‘papers’, participants are invited to bring their experiences and ideas, dilemmas from their own practice, and useful theoretical elaborations which might challenge and inspire us.

CostsThe Italian School of Constructivist Psychotherapy supports this event and would like it to be as accessible as possible. They have kindly offered to handle the administration and provide us with a meeting room without any charges. Participants will need only to pay for their travel and living expenses in Padua.

We hope that you will want to join us in a spirit of constructivist inquiry and to be part of developing our European PCP network in new and imaginative ways. Please feel free to contact any of the organisers if you would like any further information about this event, or about ECTN.

For further information about ECTN and our recent activities, please visit our website