Motivational Interviewing within an Educational Context

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a client-centred counselling approach. It aims to elicit change by helping individuals overcome the common problem of ambivalence about change.

Created to assist adult problem drinkers, MI has since been used to address a range of problematic behaviours with adults and adolescents.

A systematic review was carried out to explore how MI has been used within an educational context with children and young people (CYP) aged between 5 – 25 years old.

The findings indicated that when delivered to CYP in an educational setting, MI was somewhat effective in promoting change when compared to standard care or no intervention at all.

However, the majority of the studies reviewed focused on the use of this approach with a population who would be considered within the United Kingdom to be of compulsory secondary school age (i.e. 11 years old and older).

Addressing the gap in the literature regarding the use of MI with younger children, the empirical study used a mixed methods approach with four children aged between 9 – 11 years old.

The impact of a MI-based intervention on the frequency of problematic behaviours from the eyes of a school professional, and changes in participant's self-reported feelings of optimism, self-efficacy and adaptability were explored through a quantitative approach.

The qualitative approach sought to gather the perspective of school professionals and the participants in relation to changes in behaviour, attitude and relationship with others, and general experiences of participating in the intervention, respectively.

It was found that while the frequency of problematic behaviours did not significantly reduce, there were significant differences for some participants in self-reported feelings.

Likewise, a degree of change was stated as occurring from the perspective of the school professionals and participants.