Effectiveness Of Narrative Therapy In Promoting Students’ Resilience To Violent Extremism

Abstract

Violent extremism has been a matter of concern throughout history, in all societies and manifested in the name of various faiths, beliefs and ideologies embedded in religion, ethnicity or race.  Serious efforts have been made by various agencies and the governments to cope with this issue across the globe under the banner of Countering Terrorism (CT) and Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). After 9/11, a paradigm shift was witnessed from countering terrorism to preventing violent extremism. This paradigm shift provided bedrock for the formulation of ‘United Nations Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism’ and ‘The Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development’ which recommended the utilization of comprehensive and preventive approaches to combat violent extremism. These approaches and techniques may include inclusive development, peaceful conflict resolution, ending discrimination and state violence, ensuring social justice, tolerance and respect for diversity, at government level, and likewise, using local approaches and involving local communities particularly youth, building community resilience and developing counter narratives at academic front. The core purpose of this research endeavour was to see the effectiveness of narrative therapy in promoting students’ resilience to violent extremism. The study was built on theoretical ground provided by the intersection of narrative theory, under the social constructivist approach, and the resilience theory. It was an experimental study and one group pretest post-test experimental research design was used. Participants of the study were 10^th grade students. A self-report rating scale was used to assess students’ vulnerability to violent extremism and effectiveness of narrative therapy thereafter by measuring their attitude. The difference between mean gain scores of pre-test and post-test against all the four indicators of the scale confirmed the effectiveness of narrative therapy in promoting students’ resilience to violent extremism.