Philosophical Stance
Collaborative-Dialogue is a partnership approach that values and uses the expertise people already have to help them create individually tailored, dynamically sustainable, new pathways and futures. At the heart of collaborative-dialogue is the practitioner’s philosophical stance: an attitude and posture that invites a particular kind of relational and conversational process that allows people to develop possibilities where none seemed to exist before. The stance challenges expert/non-expert dichotomies and hierarchical structures, and enables the creation of potentials for generative change.
The ICCP introduces social construction and relational practices for those new to it and helps those familiar with it to deepen their understandings and practices. Drawing on the works of thinkers and practitioners such as Bakhtin, Gadamer, Gergen, Lyotard, Merlou-Ponty, Shotter, Wittgenstein, as well as Anderson, Goolishian, Hoffman, McNamee, Seikkula, it specifically focuses on relational constructionist understandings of language and meaning making, polyvocality, transformative dialogue, and appreciative and future-oriented perspectives.
