Education and wellbeing beyond growthism: Towards a degrowth approach in school counselling

Abstract

In this article, the authors argue that logics of growthism influence schools in ways that produce a set of tensions for the work of school counsellors. They argue that school counselling has always been concerned with development, but that the notion of development imagined by humanistic psychology is in tension with development as imagined through the growth paradigm. They further contend that this tension is embodied in the contemporary notion of wellbeing, leading to school counsellors working with young people to support their wellbeing in contradictory ways. In response, they begin to consider what a degrowth approach to school counselling might look like. We do not set out to prescribe a particular approach in any detail. Instead, their aim is to uncover the growth logics that have come to govern school counselling and to open up thinking and debate regarding the implications of approaching school counselling through a degrowth approach.