The Australian-based Dulwich Centre is a leading training provider for narrative therapy, a popular, client-centred therapeutic practice which is informed by poststructuralist thinking and draws on personal narratives or stories to define problems and propose solutions. Like a number of other distance learning courses, its skills-based, 12-month graduate diploma programme comprises a mixture of self-study and intensive taught blocks. Where it differs is in its sensitivity to the context of learning.

Two of the programme's three, two-week training blocks are scheduled at the centre's home base in Adelaide. The middle session takes place in a changing international location. For the diploma's second intake - its current one - Hong Kong was chosen. For the third intake, starting early next year, it is Mexico.

'It is very important for us to make sure there is an opportunity to consider cultural interpretations of what we are teaching,' said Michael White, co-director of the Dulwich Centre and one of the pioneers of narrative therapy. 'When blocks are held in different cultural contexts, it helps to de-centre what is taken for granted as western conceptions about practices and brings to the fore other cultural notions that are highly relevant and can be taken up in what people do.

'By being in Hong Kong, it made it possible to foreground Hong Kong Chinese culture and opened up the opportunity to fully engage participants in explorations of how ideas might be made culturally appropriate,' he said.

The location of the middle training block depends on a range of factors. These may include where participants come from, whether other events are being held there (Asia's first international narrative therapy conference took place in Hong Kong immediately after the graduate diploma course training, attracting nearly 300 people); and whether any course members come from the city and are willing to act as cultural hosts.

In the second intake, participants come from Hong Kong, Sweden, Denmark, Britain, the US and Canada, among others, and include professionals involved in social work, counselling, occupational therapy, psychiatry and psychology. Course organisers try to accept at least two people from each location so participants have someone to talk to about local context issues. The programme costs about A$5,000 ($29,100), excluding travel and accommodation.

Anne Clilverd, a team manager in community mental health in London, is one of many participants who work in a multicultural environment. Her experiences on the course - which is taught in English - have helped her to further understand her clients' point of view, she said. 'A lot of those on the course have English as a second language. It has allowed me to think about the issues and to appreciate the effort people make when they come to see me.'

The amount of travel involved in the programme can pose practical difficulties for some course members. Some participants are funded or partially funded by employers. Others may need to seek special approval to secure the time to attend.

For Hong Kong participant Dr Angela Tsun On-kee, assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at Baptist University, joining the course has meant being away during term time. While approval was granted, Dr Tsun has faced a heavy workload of rescheduled classes to make up for the absence.

The value of offering a course in different cultural contexts is not limited to participants. It provides a learning experience for faculty as well, Dr White said. 'At the recent course and conference in Hong Kong, I was quite in awe of the presentations from Hong Kong participants,' he said. 'They had picked up ideas central to narrative practice and shaped them in ways highly relevant to local culture. It was really exciting to see these initiatives. They are not something I could have arrived at, despite my familiarity with narrative practice.'