Bright, CDevine, NDu Preez, ElizabethGoedeke, S2021-11-262021-11-262022-10-28British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, DOI: 10.1080/03069885.2021.19812310306-98851469-3534https://hdl.handle.net/10292/14735This article presents New Zealand school counsellors’ narratives of counselling adolescents from a strengths-based perspective. Strength-based counselling encompasses several counselling modalities including positive psychology, narrative and solution-focused brief counselling and promotes adolescents’ strengths to enhance wellbeing. Using semi-structured interviews, eight secondary school counsellors with a strengths-based practice focus were interviewed. Narrative analysis drawing on a categorical-content mode of reading across participants’ narrative data showed that the school context plays a significant role in shaping counsellors’ practice. Metanarratives of both strength and deficit, and metanarratives of the school context were identified as having an impact on counsellors’ strength-based practices. Dominant deficit metanarratives were juxtaposed with metanarratives of strength. Implications of how counsellors negotiate counselling in a school context are discussed.Copyright © 2021 Taylor & Francis. Authors retain the right to place his/her pre-publication version of the work on a personal website or institutional repository as an electronic file for personal or professional use, but not for commercial sale or for any systematic external distribution by a third. This is an electronic version of an article published in (see Citation). British Journal of Guidance & Counselling is available online at: www.tandfonline.com with the open URL of your article (see Publisher’s Version).School counsellor; Strength-based counselling; School context; Counselling in schoolsJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1080/03069885.2021.1981231