PROCESS ANALYSIS OF A GROUP COUNSELLING AT UNIVERSITY: NARRATIVE DISCONTINUITY AND REFLEXIVE FUNCTIONS

In recent years many university services have been established in order to promote active inclusion of college students. This study focuses on a group counseling service addressed at underachieving students enrolled in University Federico II of Naples and discusses both the method of intervention adopted and the process of change. This counselling aimed to promote different levels of reflexive functions in order to allow students to implement agentive actions and improve their academic performance (Freda et al, 2015; Esposito & Freda, 2015). Counselling adopts a multimodal narrative method (Narrative Mediation Path) (NMP) which combines in a unique methodology both four narrative modes (metaphorical, iconography, writing and bodily) and the group narrative device. Each session is organized to follow the same methodology consisting in the resentation of the narrative media, the narrative construction of the experience, the meta narrative group discourse, the re-signification of the narrative experience (Freda, 2014). In order to analyze the reflexive and agentive changes promoted by the NMP, the transcripts of the counselling seven sessions and follow-up were analyzed with the Innovative Moments Coding System (Gonçalves et al., 2011, 2013). This method tracks novelties throughout the intervention process (Action, Reflection I and II, Protest I and II, Reconceptualization, Performing Change); the Innovative Moments represent the semiotic ruptures Zittoun, 2006) and the narrative discontinuity in the sense-making process. In line with the aims of the counselling, analysis showed the greater salience of Innovative Moments of reflexive and agentive nature, and the persistence of these functions in the follow up. It will be discusses the implications of the narrative method for the promotion of reflexivity and agency within the university counselling services and the need to provide targeted interventions aimed at promoting the active inclusion of students