Motivational Interviewing Slidedeck Available

Dr. Ali Cloth presented at this year's BCSCA Conference and has provided a PowerPoint slidedeck from her session.

BCSCA Oct 2025.pptx

Download PPTX • 9.97MB

Session Description

"Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a collaborative, student-centered communication approach to behavior change that emphasizes understanding, guiding, and empowering individuals to find their own motivations and change goals through reflective and responsive conversations.

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a collaborative communication approach to working with people when the topic is behavior change. Everyone feels some level of ambivalence when considering making a change. Sometimes ‘authority’ wants people (here, students) to make a change. As school professionals, we may want to shift how we strategically and thoughtfully propose, discuss and work with students about change.  School professionals/ counsellors do not need to see ‘dissent’ as resistance, but instead refine our approach. This shift includes listening and understanding where the other person (student) is coming from and asking permission to ‘inform’ or ‘advise’. We will explore and discuss the spirit of Motivational Interviewing as well as the theoretical foundation and core basic skills. We will also do some practice. Through this workshop counsellors will learn to facilitate and guide more effective change conversations and processes. MI is an evidence based approach that helps people find their own reasons for change and their own goals and solutions on that road to change. It is effective for use (almost) across age groups (primarily for those who have abstract thought/ reasoning, or their guardians/parents and teachers), for different difficult to ‘change’ problems and across various cultures."