Exploring Group Life Design with teachers in the context of poverty related psychosocial challenges

Working in challenging contexts can impact negatively on a teacher’s sense of purpose and efficacy. This article explores the potential of group Life Design (LD), a narrative constructivist career counselling process, for supporting ten South African school teachers working at an under-resourced school with understanding their career aspirations and their personal and professional identity. The group LD process formed part of a participatory action learning and action research (PALAR) project. This article focuses on teachers’ experience of the group LD process. Participating teachers reflected in writing and during group discussions on their experience of the LD process. Qualitative data generated from transcriptions of their discussions and written reflections were thematically coded. Findings suggest that the group LD process encouraged participants to reflect on themes from their life narratives to encourage agency for pursuing their future personal and professional goals. Through the LD process, the teachers acknowledged personal and professional assets, from past and present narratives which could motivate them during challenging times. The LD process ignited agency for action to achieve career and personal goals. Participants designed future life maps and also explored pathways for collectively improving their support to learners.


Introduction and Literature Review
If teachers are capacitated with appropriate skills and knowledge, then feelings of efficacy and competence are fostered (Loots, Ebersöhn, Ferreira & Eloff, 2012;Mwoma & Pillay 2015;Nel, Lazarus & Daniels, 2010).Challenging socio-economic realities in the communities in which learners reside pose a significant challenge to learning and teaching, and are an obstacle to teachers meeting their professional career goals (Wood & Goba, 2011).This in turn, negatively affects teacher motivation and efficacy (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010) and cannot be separated from personal goals and identity (Guichard, 2005).In the context of this study, teacher efficacy refers to the teacher's belief in their capacity to plan, organise and carry out activities to attain their professional goals (Bandura, 2006;Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010).In this article, we report on a qualitative research project, which explored the potential of a group-based Life Design process, for supporting teachers who experienced a loss of efficacy (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010).An increase in teacher efficacy is positively related to career adaptability (McLennan, McIlveen & Perera, 2017), defined as "the self-regulation strengths or capacities that a person may draw upon to solve the unfamiliar, complex, and ill-defined problems presented by developmental vocational tasks, occupational transitions, and work traumas" (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012:662).The facilitator of the group LD process is a registered educational psychologist and lecturer in educational psychology at an institution of higher education.While offering therapeutic services to individual educators and learners at a school in a peri-urban context, she realised the need to go beyond individual therapy sessions with teachers to address the impact of poverty-related challenges affecting their sense of efficacy at the school.Teachers at the school had sought individual therapeutic interventions for challenges stemming from financial problems, workrelated stress, trauma, HIV and AIDS, grief, and relationship problems.They also requested assistance with giving support to learners facing poverty-related psychosocial challenges.The facilitator observed that these teachers were committed to supporting the learners, but that the lack of infrastructural and financial resources at school level hampered them in doing this.Teachers often used their own personal funds and time to support learners and this placed financial and psychological pressure on the teachers and their families.In addition, demanding workloads and extra-curricular school activities lead to teachers feeling demotivated and in need of support to prevent burnout.Teachers who volunteered to support learners thought there was little acknowledgement and support for their pastoral role in caring for learners with poverty-related psychosocial challenges.
Teachers' emotional exhaustion, linked to role overload, compounded feelings of poor efficacy.This situation is not an isolated one, as literature confirms that teachers working in such contexts of poverty face severe threats to their emotional health and perceptions of self-efficacy (Mwoma & Pillay, 2015;Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010;Smit, Fritz & Mabalane, 2010;Theron, Geyer, Strydom & Delport, 2008).Although much has been written about in-service teacher development to increase self-efficacy and address the problems facing South African schools (Jansen & Blank, 2014), this study adds to the body of knowledge through the adoption of a participatory approach, strengthened by an intervention not normally applied in a group setting within a school context.In response to the teachers' obvious need for support, the facilitator suggested they embark on a participatory action learning and action research process, starting with a group LD process to enable them to first develop their sense of self-efficacy to better cope with the challenging demands of their career.The following research question was formulated: "How could a group Life Design process support teachers to develop their sense of self-efficacy to better cope with the challenging demands of working in an under-resourced school community?" We will now explain the research paradigm and methodology followed by an explanation of the process and findings.

Research Paradigm
LD, a narrative social constructivist career psychology process, originated within career counselling to help people plan their work lives and secure meaningful employment (Savickas, 2011).Career counselling has evolved over the past few decades and is now about designing a life narrative and identity where work goals, social roles and life purpose are meaningfully integrated according to life themes (Hartung, 2011).The LD process encourages social and cognitive reflexivity (Cook & Maree, 2016) in the life-long iterative process of re-discovering personal and career identities (Guichard, 2005) particularly during periods of transition (Savickas, 2011).Participants apply the insights and competencies (Hirschi, Herrmann & Keller, 2015) that they have discovered during the self-constructing (Guichard, 2005) and career constructing process, to achieve personal and professional goals when faced with both life opportunities and life challenges (Savickas, 2011).
LD aims for participants to experience lifelong career satisfaction and foster career adaptability (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012) by reflexively exploring their personal and professional identities in a continuous process of self-construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction (Cook & Maree, 2016;Savickas, 2011).Past narratives are deconstructed for the value they have to inform and guide the way forward.An ability and willingness to iteratively reconstruct their life and career narratives as needs, interests and contexts change constitute the cornerstones of the LD process (Savickas, 2013).Traditional LD entails an LD facilitator working with an individual as the central focus, to enable the individual to 'contain or hold' themselves (Savickas, 2011) during periods of personal and career transitions.The theme or golden thread then becomes a guide for approaching life and making decisions.
The LD process typically follows six steps, which start with the LD counsellor and client establishing a working alliance and collaboratively exploring the client's narrative history and context for the identified problem, which emerges from the narration, while highlighting the client's core and peripheral roles in the various contexts.Individuals thus explore their identity and function within the roles they played.After articulation, the narratives become more explicit or concrete, allowing the individual to objectively view the narratives from new perspectives.This new perspective allows the individual to revitalise previously silenced stories to re-author and revise for the future.The individual is now able to place the problem within the newly re-authored perspective allowing for a new narrative to be built on the problem story.The individual articulates and commits to their potential in the new role(s) and identity.They are assisted with reflection and articulation of their experience and expectations, where their reflection on past experience and current reality informs future expectations and their new role(s) and identity.The action stage now follows on from the commitment.A new narrative is created through a collaborative plan for moving from the current to the desired reality.This step includes both how to deal with current and potential future obstacles, as well as enlisting the support of significant others for the new narrative.The LD counsellor at this stage needs to check with the client regarding whether or not their objectives for counselling have been met.A written summary of the action plan and the new identity statement crystallises the identified sustainable strengths, and provides clients with a tangible way forward that the client can refer to in periods of transition.The success of the process is gauged through short-and long-term follow-up, so as to study the outcomes and also provide additional consultation for clarity, support and maintenance through transitional periods (Savickas, Nota, Rossier, Dauwalder, Duarte, Guichard, Soresi, Van Esbroek & Van Vianen, 2009:246-247).
Di Fabio and Maree (2012) explored groupbased LD counselling with reference to the global economic reality, where individual career counselling is affordable only to a minority.The support and guidance offered through the subjective reflections of participants in a group LD process add value to the process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction, as compared to the individual LD process (Di Fabio & Maree, 2012).A group LD process was used to support teachers working at an under-resourced school to understand their own personal and professional identity, following the six steps as explained.

Life Design Process and Activities
The six-step process for this group LD research project started with a balloon exercise as metaphor for lost dreams (See Table 1).The exercise served as an ice breaker and later also provided a stimulus for individual participants to reflect on their current career reality, compared to their previous goals and dreams (Cook & Maree, 2016;Savickas, 2011).When they reflected as a group on the balloon activity, group members became aware of each other's dreams, both those achieved and broken.
The next activity, the lifeline turning point exercise (Zuber-Skerritt & Teare, 2013) encouraged reflection on past life events.The participants created a metaphor such as a river or road, to highlight significant turning points (events) which had influenced their life (Zuber-Skerritt & Teare, 2013).Participants then shared these experiences with one another through verbal reflections and responses to clarifying questions.The objective of the exercise was to both foster relationship and understanding, and then to acknowledge the individual participant's life experiences.By reflecting on these experiences participants gained insight into how they addressed past challenges.This awareness had the potential to inform the way forward.The LD facilitator assisted the participants to identify evidence of their own past strengths within their realities, which the participants draw on as resources as they navigate their way forward to achieve the planned future life narrative.With LD, it is not only the individual who is brought into the narrative but also the family, and other significant people in the participant's past.The family genogram as a technique originated in the field of family therapy and is used in the LD process to identify intergenerational career themes or threads (Fritz & Beekman, 2007).The aim is to identify family members who influenced the participant, and to look for similarities between those individuals and the participant, thus examining identity formation as it relates to those who are familiar, or family members.The genogram technique encourages the individual to connect personal dreams with the themes appearing in the genogram.With the LD genogram, the participant also identifies a life motto or theme to reflect on as they construct their future life narrative.The motto becomes a beacon to guide the participant in times of transition (Savickas, 2011).The LD activities ended with participants designing individual future life maps.The life map included a future timeline with short-, medium-and long-term goals and participants discussed in pairs how they hoped to achieve these goals.Table 1 below, summarises the process and purpose of the LD activities in this study.

Activity
Process and value for individual or group Balloon exercise as metaphor for lost dreams Participants worked outside in pairs wearing casual clothes.They were given a water-filled balloon to pass between each other, each time moving one step away from each other.The balloon may have fallen and burst at any point.This served as an enjoyable ice-breaker that encouraged further conversation when participants regrouped.During the group discussion the balloon symbolised their life and career dreams from adolescence to the present.This helped them reflect on their current career trajectory, compared to their previous goals and dreams.They then reflected on this activity with the group.The lifeline turning point exercise (Zuber-Skerritt & Teare, 2013) The participants created a metaphor like a river or road, to highlight significant turning points (events) which had influenced their life (Zuber-Skerritt & Teare, 2013).They then shared this with other participants who give verbal reflections and asked clarifying questions.The objective of the exercise was to initially foster understanding and to acknowledge past life experiences.

Family genogram
The participant created a family genogram for as far back as he could recall, to find common interests and career ideals with other family members.

Future timeline
Participants were requested to create a future timeline with short, medium and long term goals and discuss in pairs how they hoped to achieve these goals.The activity ended with individuals writing down what they would like to see written on their tombstones after they have passed on.

Research Participants
The facilitator presented the proposed linked PALAR-LD project to the entire staff of an underresourced high school in a peri-urban area of South Africa with the permission of the principal.The presentation involved an explanation of how the PALAR-LD process would encourage teachers to reflect on their personal and career goals and how the process might enable them to be more confident in fulfilling these roles.Five female (one white, four black) and five male teachers (five black) initially volunteered to be part of the project.

Data Generation
Data was generated from participants' taped verbal reflections within the group and individual written reflections on the LD activities post-sessions.The use of verbal and written reflections by all partici-pants ensured crystallisation of data (Mertens, 2010).

Data Analysis and Interpretation Style
The data were coded thematically according to Tesch's steps for qualitative data (Tesch, 1990:58) independently by the three researchers who then met to reach consensus on the final themes, which were then confirmed with the participants.Direct quotes of the participants were taken from their written reflections and from transcriptions of their verbal discussions to support the themes, which were also controlled against literature.

Rigour of the Study
The research process was followed systematically, with academic rigour, following a PALAR process (Zuber-Skerritt, 2011).In this PALAR process, the participants met regularly as they engaged in a systematic and empirically sound inquiry into how to identify, address and resolve the contextual issues, starting with a group LD process for understanding their own personal and professional aspirations.The research findings were verified with participants in a group session before being published.

Ethical Considerations
This group LD process was conducted according to the ethical requirements of the Research Ethics Committee of the North-West University, who approved the research project.The facilitator's adherence to The Health Profession Council of South Africa's ethical code as a registered educational psychologist also ensured ethical practice in the interest of participant wellness (Myers & Sweeney, 2008).

Results
We will now focus on the participating teachers' own experience of the LD process and the potential value of the process in their current reality and for the future.The verbatim quotations that support the discussion are given with participants labelled A to L to ensure anonymity.Spelling and grammar in the quotations appear as in the original data.
Theme 1: LD Helped Improve Teacher Sense of Self-efficacy Reflecting on the group LD process, created the space for teacher participants to reconnect with their lost dreams, by reflecting on where they came from and comparing this to the current reality for informing way forward): The reflection on their past promoted a sense of personal responsibility for ensuring that they themselves and their learners will not be deterred from achieving their personal and career dreams.They acknowledge their potential as teachers to achieve their goals which had earlier seemed much more difficult to achieve in the face of the povertyrelated contextual challenges: Even though the Group LD process involved reflecting on painful life experiences, participants experienced it as cathartic and later felt confident and motivated enough to extend support even beyond the school community: "It arouses a mixture of feelings within me.I can use this activity in the future when I need to encourage a friend, a colleague or loved one who has lost hope about their life to soldier on despite the worst-case scenarios in their lives" (Participant L).
Participants said that the group LD process created the space for them to learn about each other's deeply personal experiences in a safe space, where their privacy and integrity were protected.Within this space participants deconstructed their past hurts and with the facilitator and peer support coconstructed an integrated "self" which included home and career realities: "Some of the turning points in my life are not good or maybe I should say I don't like to talk about […] but I must say that it's good it happened the way it did because I can't imagine having to spend many years in a marriage with somebody who does not appreciate you" (Participant L).
The process also strengthened a sense of belonging and personal identity by making participants aware of meaningful roles for themselves at home, at work and within their community.Peer support has proven to be a valuable medium for increasing collegiality and job satisfaction (Cravens & Drake, 2017): "The Genogram conscientised me about the importance of family e.g.staying together and taking care of each other" (Participant L). "This balloon activity made me feel good in a sense of being free and content.We should continue doing such activities so to learn more on knowing how to go about helping others" (Participant K).
A group identity was formed on the realisation that others understood the individual's professional and personal challenges.Where teachers previously worked in isolation in their individual attempts to provide support to learners, the relationships were deepened and extended during the LD process: "We are working well as group members and identifying the types of places whereby our learners are living and how we can improve those places […] Even the parents we can invite them to join us there and it can be a success.If we all work together here" (Participant H).
The group process was not always easy, as participants reflected on both their past successes and failures and through acknowledging past mistakes they were able to plan better for the future: "most of the things that you [LD facilitator] did [LD activities] they do boil back to me as the teacher, even when I want to put the blame on kids, when I want to put the blame on parents, but at the end of the day, my role as teacher, I didn't do it" (Participant D).
By acknowledging where they had fallen short in the past, participants were able to feel less overwhelmed and with support from colleagues commit to achieving the goals they had previously set for themselves, with the realisation that regular reflection is required to adapt to changing realities:

Discussion
We now briefly discuss our research findings as compared to the expected outcomes of the six-step process of Savickas et al. (2009).We explore how the various themes identified from the LD process enabled teachers to understand their own personal and professional identity, and so to increase selfefficacy to deal with the challenges of working in an under-resourced school community.Our findings support recent research indicating that there is a positive relationship between increased self-efficacy and career adaptability in teachers (McLennan et al., 2017), rendering them better able to meet their professional goals in spite of contextual challenges.The research results suggest that participants were able to apply the insights from the LD process for reconstructing the self (Guichard, 2005;Hirschi et al., 2015), as evidenced through their heightened sense of morale, encouragement and rekindled sense of purpose, and for reformulating personal and career goals (Savickas, 2011).This promoted a sense of personal and professional efficacy (Bandura, 2006), where the participants started to acknowledge their capacity to attain their professional goals (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010).In spite of challenging contextual demands, LD aims not only to link career and identity, but to integrate all spheres of life, and the participants reported they were better able to create meaningful roles for themselves at home, at work and within their community (Hartung, 2011).The study suggests that participants made meaning from their narrated stories which they could then use to make future personal and career decisions.The renewed belief in their individual and collective agency (Luszczynska, Schwarzer, Lippke & Mazurkiewicz, 2011) encouraged participants to start planning the way forward to carry out activities to attain the goals (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010) they set for themselves as individuals and as a collective, following the group LD process.As far as we could establish, results of LD with a group of teachers in an underresourced school have not been reported before in South Africa.Our findings differ from research which suggests that contextual challenges necessarily lead to teachers being demotivated to the extent that they are unable to take action (Iwu, Gwija, Benedict & Tengeh, 2013;Mwoma & Pillay, 2015).The findings also supported recent research that processes designed to increase selfefficacy, such as LD, contribute to an increase in career adaptability and career optimism (McLennan et al., 2017).The reflections by participants on the process spoke directly to the role of teachers as change agents, who encourage learners to solve their own problems.Although there is ample literature to support the value of self-reflective forms of teacher development (Moon, 1999), this study emphasised the need for first using a psychological intervention, in this case Life Design, to increase teacher self-efficacy, before expecting them to be able to take action to improve their professional practice.The suggestion of teacher participants to involve parents and other community stakeholders aligns with principles of action leadership for building positive human relationships and networking toward solutions that will work best for the common good (Zuber-Skerritt, 2011).Evidence of the sustainability of the learning and how it was integrated into the everyday practice of the school is the subject of a future article currently in press.

Conclusion
Although this was a small, contextualised study, whose findings cannot be generalised, it does offer evidence that where contextual challenges had led teachers to lose sight of their goals and dreams, the group LD process enabled the teachers to collectively explore their life narratives to reconnect with their past personal and career goals and to integrate the past and current narratives to guide the way forward.The LD process allowed the teachers, working as a group, to identify their support needs and this provided a platform for deeper relationships and empathy between the members.The collaborative process strengthened the teachers' sense of self-efficacy, making them more able to adapt to challenging career demands.This is a necessary first step before embarking on a PALAR process to identify and address contextual psychosocial challenges within their learners' reality.The group LD process encouraged the teachers to reflect on their personal and professional strengths within their individual narratives.The study highlighted how the LD process allowed the teacher participants to reconnect with their lost dreams and forgotten goals, thereby promoting self-efficacy.Collaborative reflection on their past narratives helped to increase their sense of self-efficacy and career adaptability and promote their ability to be action leaders.While this research article reflects on the LD process at one particular South African school, findings may encourage teachers in other contexts to explore the group LD process to understand and address their own personal and career challenges, particularly where contextual challenges erode their professional and self-efficacy.The findings clearly suggest that by implementing a group-based LD process, teachers were better able to understand their personal and professional identity in the context of an under-resourced school community, and as a result, be in a better position to translate this learning into their work to collaboratively embark on ways to support learners with psychosocial challenges.The collaborative LD process followed in this study also may prove useful for expanding the current research into social-cognitive career theory, which is strongly focused on improving teacher self-efficacy.