Learning experience of "six-step reframing" in neuro-linguistic programming and its possible influences on thinking styles

Abstract

This is a multiple-case study about 16 university students’ (hereafter called participants) learning experience of “six-step reframing” in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and an exploration about whether the practice of such reframing (hereafter called the Practice) could be used to enhance the participants’ Type I thinking styles.

Each participant was treated as a case on his/her own. The researcher met each voluntary participant individually on three occasions. First, each participant was given a pre-test of thinking styles, a NLP workshop, the first NLP “six-step reframing” practice, a first post-test of thinking styles and a first follow-up interview. One week later, the participant was given a second NLP “six-step reframing” practice, a second post test of thinking styles and a second follow-up interview. One month later, the participant was given a delayed final post test of thinking styles and in-depth interview for review of their experience and validation of the observations and measurements made in the entire process. All measurement results and practice and interview transcripts were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively according to the nature of the data.

Results indicated that all participants felt positively towards the experience of the Practice. Through the Practice, they were able to identify their own limiting beliefs in learning and discover some new learning methods to overcome the problems. Furthermore, a desirable increase in Type I thinking styles was observed for most of the participants after the Practice. 8 of the participants showed marked increase (with effect size≥0.8) and 3 showed slight increase (with effect size <0.8). For the remaining 5 participants, 2 of them showed marked decrease (with effect size≥0.8) and 3 showed slight decrease (with effect size <0.8).

Case-by-case analysis indicated the marked increase in Type I thinking styles could reasonably be explained by certain characteristics of the methods that the participants discovered in solving their problems, as well as characteristics of the processes they experienced in the Practice, such as the internal dialogue among different sensing “parts” within their awareness and the stimulation of multiple perspective perceptions in generating new insights to overcome their limiting beliefs, which share a lot of commonality with the characteristics of Type I thinking styles. In the 2 cases of marked decrease in Type I thinking style, interfering factors like fear and illness were identified.

Based on the results, the researcher argues that in order that the problem solving experience can lead to desirable changes in the participants’ preferred ways of thinking, affective aspects of the experience is also highly important. Salient features in the Practice such as “generation of positive affection”, “provision of serene environment”, “autonomy to choose freely”, “reflection upon past life experiences” and “ownership of the self-identified problems” might have contributed to explain why the Practice was effective to most participants in this research in enhancing their Type I thinking style but similar success had not been observed so far in other intervention studies using problem solving tasks. The thesis also discussed the limitations of the study and implications for further education and psychological research.