‘Who decided this?’: Negotiating epistemic and deontic authority in systemic family therapy training

Abstract

In this article we illustrate how trainers and trainees negotiate epistemic and deontic authority within systemic family therapy training. Adult education principles and postmodern imperatives have challenged trainers’ and trainees’ asymmetries regarding knowledge (epistemics) and power (deontics), normatively implicated by the institutional training setting. Up-to-date, we lack insight into how trainers and trainees negotiate epistemic and deontic rights in naturally occurring dialog within training. Drawing from discursive psychology and conversation analysis, we present an analysis of eight transcribed, videotaped training seminars from a systemic family therapy training program, featuring three trainers and eleven trainees. Our analysis highlights the dilemmatic ways in which participants resist and affirm the normatively implicated trainers’ deontic and epistemic authority. Trainers are shown as mitigating directives and trainees as resisting them, with both displaying (not)knowing, while attending to concerns about (a)symmetry. We discuss our findings’ implications for systemic family therapy training.

Agenda-setting in first sessions of business coaching—a focus on coaches’ practices to manage the agenda and establish the working alliance

“…how coaches shape coaching-relevant knowledge, entitlements and orientations to knowledge and knowledgeability and overall render coaching a client-centered interaction. Yet, in line with Vehviläinen (2003) and Vehviläinen and Souto’s (2022) observations for counseling and Nanouri et al’s. (2022) observations for adult education and therapy trainings, the professional coaches display a ‘double orientation,’ i.e., they orient to being collaborative, while retaining their authority.…”

“…Yet, when and how this ‘space’ is given is often determined by the professional expert: “To use the time available effectively, to cover all the tasks, and to encourage talk about issues that usually are difficult to address (…), it is useful for the counselor to take initiatory actions and to control the agenda” ( Peräkylä, 1995 , p. 97). More generally, it can be argued that professionals’ interactional dominance is an institution-endemic, functional, and vital part of the encounter, something that also the clients endorse in and through their own conduct ( Nanouri et al, 2022 ; Stevanovic et al, 2022 , p. 1). It is particularly the overall ‘how’ of both the structural and the thematic agenda-setting that determines the relational quality of agenda-setting and, consequently, of the entire encounter: Alongside professional or client-controlled approaches to setting the agenda ( Schein, 1978 ), “(…) agendas can be set collaboratively with each party contributing ideas about what is important to cover in the visit and negotiating whether and when these ideas will be discussed.…”

Between teacher candidates’ reflection and teacher educators’ evaluation: Fluctuations in epistemic (a)symmetry in feedback conversations

“…Knowledge asymmetries displayed through talk are increasingly receiving attention in various contexts, such as gaming interactions (e.g., Piirainen–Marsh & Tainio, 2014), peer tutoring (Back, 2016), second‐language (L2) classroom interaction (Batlle & Deal, 2021), family therapy training (Nanouri et al., 2022), and parent–teacher conferences (Caronia, 2023). These asymmetries are found to be of consequence for higher order actions achieved through talk, such as complaints and suggestions (Heritage, 2012b), or, in Sidnell's (2012) words, “whatever else that the participants are up to” (p. 315), including the focal pedagogical interactional achievements of this study: evaluation and inviting reflection.…”

Power and dialogue: A review of discursive research

“…Therapists managed issues of expertise by giving advice and emphasizing the expertise of the family members. Such discursive investigations can inform practice and sensitize clinicians to the dilemmas of authority in their work and reflect on their own conversational practices (Nanouri et al, 2022).…”