Neuro-linguistic programming as an innovation in education and teaching

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.