Neuro‐linguistic programming as an innovation in education and teaching

Abstract

Neuro‐linguistic programming (NLP) – an emergent, contested approach to communication and personal development created in the 1970s – has become increasingly familiar in education and teaching. There is little academic work on NLP to date. This article offers an informed introduction to, and appraisal of, the field for educators. We review the origins of NLP, and summarise its nature as a method of, and conceptual framework for, education and teaching, with brief examples of applications. We argue that NLP offers an innovative praxis, underpinned in principle by Bateson's epistemological thinking, which informs a distinctive methodology known as ‘modelling’. The credibility of the field relies, in our view, on its ability to address seven critical issues. These form a possible research agenda and a focus for dialogue between NLP practitioner and academic communities.

Keywords:

• learning
• epistemology
• modelling
• language

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the University of Surrey Scholarship Fund, which has made this project possible, and colleagues in the Centre for Management Learning and Development who critiqued earlier versions of this manuscript.

Notes

1. UK Council for Psychotherapy (http://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/iqs/dbitemid.84/sfa.view/cs1.html; accessed July 6, 2010)

2. MSc in Organisation Development and Neuro‐linguistic Technologies

3. MSc in Change Agent Skills and Strategies

4. Personal communication, Richard Churches (Lead Consultant, Leadership Development, CfBT Education Trust).

5. The University of Bielefeld: http://www.nlp.de/cgi-bin/research/nlp-rdb.cgi (retrieved March 9, 2007).

6. Personal communication, Dr Michael Ben‐Avie, associate of the Yale University Child Study Center.

7. Journal contents are listed at: http://theletterworthpress.com/nlpworld/ (retrieved March 9, 2007).

8. See: http://www.thenlpcompany.com/techniques/what-is-nlp?/ (retrieved July 28, 2010).

9. We adopt the UK spelling, ‘modelling’, unless quoting from sources that use the US spelling, ‘modeling’.

10. The Institute for the Advanced Studies of Health ‘NLP Research and Recognition Project’ was established in 2006 to assemble evidence of NLP's efficacy (http://www.nlprandr.org/; retrieved July 6, 2010).

11. For example, the Association for Neuro‐Linguistic Programming (ANLP) general code of ethics (http://www.anlp.org/; retrieved March 9, 2007); the Neuro Linguistic Psychotherapy & Counselling Association (NLPtCA) code of ethics for psychotherapists (http://www.nlptca.com/ethics.php; retrieved March 9, 2007).