Supporting New Teachers Through Consultee-Centered Group Consultation

New teachers are often unprepared for the emotional, physical, social, and psychological demands of teaching. Traditional staff development models may not be well suited to meet the needs of these teachers. However, school psychologists and counselors are in an excellent position to facilitate the professional and problem-solving skills of new teachers, using Caplan's consultee-centered group consultation model. In this project, 5 beginning elementary school teachers participated in a biweekly consultation group for 8 months. We found that the new teachers' emphasis on 'self as teacher' was evident throughout the year and that the consultation groups provided the teachers with a forum for engaging in meaningful professional dialogue with colleagues. The findings presented include an example of the consultative problem-solving process, a content analysis of the problems presented, and the teachers' impressions of the impact of the group. Finally, suggestions are provided for school consultants.     

Developing Instructional Consultants: From Novice to Competent to Expert

The development of instructional consultants requires both an understanding of the essential elements of instructional consultation (IC) and a conceptual model for development of skills. IC is a collaborative stage-based process that focuses on academic and behavioral concerns from an ecological perspective. It also emphasizes the importance of language and working relationships in the consultation process. In the first level of development, novice consultants develop awareness and conceptual understanding, as well as limited skills. Competency is achieved through application of skills in school settings with supervision that focuses, with the assistance of audiotaping the consultation sessions, on language and relationship issues as well as content. Advanced skills and proficiency emerge during extended opportunity for practice, supervision and research among those individuals who become interested in developing expertise in this domain of practice. Most training programs provide limited opportunities for competency and expertise to be developed past the novice level. It is essential to enhance educational opportunities and options if consultation practice is to achieve its full potential.     

试论高校心理咨询教师在危机干预中的作用

高校心理咨询工作对促进学生身心的健康成长具有重要作用。高校心理咨询工作多由教师承担，由于身兼教师和心理咨询师的双重身份，易对心理咨询工作造成干扰。因此从伦理道德素质、专业素质和职业技能要求等方面，对高校心理咨询教师提出了要求，并对如何有效地进行心理危机干预提出了看法。     

Consultation Barriers Between Teachers and External Consultants: A Grounded Theory of Change Resistance in School Consultation

The aim of this study, conducted in Sweden, was to investigate the cultural barriers between school personnel (teachers and principals) and nonschool personnel (a resource team), who were external to the school system, regarding consultation about challenging or difficult-to-teach students. Focus groups with teachers, principals, and the resource team as well as interviews with students and parents were conducted. The qualitative analysis resulted in a grounded theory of change resistance in the context of school consultation. Differences in professional assumptions led to conflicting professional main concerns. An intergroup conflict was inevitable in many cases and the professional cultural barriers that remained produced and reinforced professional ethnocentricity. This contributed to a lack of integration between external consultants and school personnel. Lack of integration contributed to the legitimacy loss and the maintenance of professional ethnocentricity. The basic social process of change resistance was centered in the interaction between professional ethnocentricity and lack of integration.     

Innovative Team Building Practices for Professionals: Developing Inter-Group Skills to Enhance Effective Performance

The complexities of bringing teams of professionals together to work in a sustained and effective manner toward a common goal are considerable. The necessary inter-group skills involved are often not a part of most professional preparation programs. This article describes an innovative workshop for secondary preservice teachers which targeted the development of communication, problem solving, and team building. Results are promising. Any team of individuals, whether it be a group of professors, a program that utilizes a cohort model (a group of individuals who go through a program or process together), or simply a group needing to develop effective inter-group skills, may benefit from similar workshops. The article invites continued discussion and research concerning the training of professionals in team building and inter-group skills.     

Behavioral Consultation as a Process for Linking the Assessment and Treatment of Social Skills

There has been recent interest in social skills assessment and treatment among researchers and practitioners. The research bases in these areas are expanding rapidly, and the identification of valid assessment methods and effective intervention strategies is promising. However, few researchers have identified ways m which social skills assessment and intervention can be linked in a practical manner. Likewise, the process by which services are delivered is rarely addressed. The purpose of this article is to present a model by which the interaction between social skills assessment and intervention can be enhanced, with a focus on the problem-solving process. One effective and efficient manner of providing services to socially unskilled children is through an indirect model of service delivery; that of behavioral consultation. Behavioral consultation is a four-stage problem-solving model that involves the cooperative efforts of two or more persons to clarify a student's needs and develop and implement appropriate strategies for intervention. This article presents the objectives and procedures of each stage of behavioral consultation as a process to facilitate accurate problem identification and effective problem resolution, with the goal of linking social skills assessment directly to treatment.     

Consultation as a Framework for Productive Collaboration in Early Intervention

Drawing on the perspectives of itinerant early childhood special education (ECSE) consultants reported in previous research, this article identifies issues and challenges specific to early intervention and education that must be considered for itinerant ECSE consultants to engage in productive consultation with personnel in child care or other center-based programs. The article concludes with recommendations for professional development and standards in consultation practice for early intervention and education personnel. The authors also suggest future directions for consultation research.     

Interdisciplinary Collaboration Supporting Social-Emotional Learning in Rural School Systems

In this article we illustrate the roles of school psychologists, administrators, social workers, teachers, and parents in school reform by describing the adoption, initial implementation, and formative evaluation of an evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) program within several rural Midwestern school districts in a geographically large county. As part of a countywide initiative aimed at improving children's mental health services, an interdisciplinary team collaborated to select and implement a universal school-based curriculum addressing SEL objectives. Professionals in the county's special education cooperative lead the reform effort, general education teachers deliver the curriculum, and school psychologists and school social workers have served as trainers and consultants to educators and building administrators. An ecological model of organizational consultation informs these efforts. We illustrate this model by describing its application to the collaborative school-based initiative addressing SEL objectives. We also discuss implications for future consultation research, training, and practice.     

A 30 Year Perspective On Best Practices for Consultation Training

This article uses the author's 30 years of teaching consultation as a basis for developing suggestions for those providing training in this field. The article addresses questions about what the content of training should be, how consultation training can link theory to practice and how to respond to persistent challenges to training (e.g., freedom versus constraint, multicultural consultation, and when consultation training should be offered within a preservice curriculum for developing school-based consultants). The training suggestions derive from a model of consultation and consultation training that is based in constructivism and seeks to enhance feelings of empowerment and long term implementation of consultation on the part of the trainee. The article proposes a practitioner-researcher model in which practicing consultants view themselves as researchers who collect data and share information about their practice with other school-based consultants. These shared practices are used to inform the knowledge base and are used as a basis for contributing to the scholarly literature. Finally, this article proposes directions for researching the process and outcome of consultation training that cut across all of the issues raised in this article.     

Breadth and the Core

Abstract

This article describes a staff development process aimed at promoting flexible approaches to ‘A’ levels and places it in the wider context of student achievement and teaching and learning styles. In addition to a number of Barnet College English Literature team INSET activities, staff and curriculum development has also involved a Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) funded collaborative project with Ravenscroft School in Barnet and involvement with the London Six Consortium for the AEB's ‘A’ level English Literature 660 Syllabus.     

An Integrative Approach to Teaching Consultation and Supervision

This article describes an approach to teaching consultation and supervision. The course treats the two helping processes as natural outgrowths of counseling within an integrated conceptual framework. The course is not meant to train specialists in consultation and supervision. Rather, it is designed to help future practitioners gain adequate understanding of the two helping functions and acquire attitudes and skills required for consulting and supervisory roles. The didactic component of the course is based on the Three-Dimensional Intervention Model. It helps clarify the generic unity and specific differences of consultation and supervision vis-à-vis counseling. The course structure also provides students with opportunities to adapt counseling skills to situations typical in consulting and supervisory work.     

Learning How to Learn in a Technology Course: A Case Study

There is a growing interest in helping students to become better learners, and this article describes how the team designing an Open University distance-learning course set out to create a course that would explicitly attempt to help students acquire the learning characteristics of mature and capable practitioners in the field. The article discusses how the course team went about this task in ways that turned out to be consistent with both experiential and constructivist perspectives of learning. It explains how the learning-to-learn goals of the course were explicitly articulated to students and how the course structure and the assessment policy sought to 'impel' students to acquire and deploy learning skills that would stand them in good stead after graduation. The article ends by reviewing the evidence, available from students' marked assignments and from surveys, of how well students actually did 'learn how to learn'.     

Preparation for lifelong learning using ePortfolios

Rapid technological change, increasing globalization and a changing world of employment with multiple roles during one's professional life are necessitating a change from knowledge to learning societies. Full participation requires lifelong learning skills, meaning the ability to solve problems, work both independently and in a team, communicate effectively in all formats and on all levels, and self-direct one's learning and professional development needs. Universities need to take responsibility in preparing students for lifelong learning. While engineering and science degrees traditionally do not emphasize the importance of lifelong learning skills new programmes of study are now being introduced, often using electronic portfolios to support engagement with learning objectives and reflection. This article describes an electronic portfolio initiative that is targeted at engineering and computer science students. The initiative aims to create awareness among students on the nature and importance of lifelong learning skills, to facilitate the development of such skills and to assist students in showcasing their competence regarding these skills. Interviews with industry representatives regarding the characteristics of a lifelong learner and the values of constructing and presenting portfolios were conducted and have resulted in strong support for the electronic portfolio initiative. The article provides background on lifelong learning and electronic portfolios, outlines the design of the initiative and then focuses on feedback from industry representatives.     

Educating Consultants for Multicultural Practice of Consultee-Centered Consultation

ABSTRACT

Literature about educating consultants with knowledge, skills, and dispositions to work effectively within culturally and linguistically diverse schools is scarce. Research suggests that additional attention is needed on the preparation of consultants to practice with multicultural competence. This article reviews theories and research and presents four educational strategies for preparing consultants for multicultural practice of consultee-centered consultation (CCC). Specific attention is given to ways that educators can teach and supervise learners of CCC by integrating issues of worldview, culture, and different perspectives, thereby scaffolding learning toward the development of multicultural competence in consultation.     

Through the looking glass … preservice professional portfolio's

Abstract

This article shares one institution's experiences using professional portfolios to assist future teachers in becoming effective practitioners and making the transition between school and work. It describes the portfolio development process and the exit presentations. Both give students a peer/faculty forum to showcase their competencies, growth, and promote reflection, self‐confidence, job search preparedness, and an increased awareness of professional standards. In order to ascertain students’ perceptions regarding the development of a professional portfolio, faculty administered a questionnaire. Student feedback highlighted the benefits of portfolio development and offered suggestions for future improvements. They overwhelmingly viewed the invested time as worthwhile, saw the process as an appropriate program exit assessment, and recommended its continuation with future students. In addition, their suggestions held implications for portfolio use in teacher training programs.     

Case Study: Improving Customer Satisfaction,Quality, and Performance Using Performance‐Centered Solutions at ADDS Communications

A team of performance consultants looks closely at the operations of a cable services provider to identify existing performance gaps, barriers to performance, declining customer satisfaction ratings, and increased call volumes. The team used performance‐centered design (PCD) solutions in order to overcome technical support challenges through increased first‐call resolution. This article summarizes the root cause analysis, process, and the application of PCD solutions to close performance gaps, along with lessons learned from this case study.     

The Cobbler's Children: Improving Performance Improvement at Amerigroup

A team of performance consultants at Amerigroup applied their chosen human performance technology (HPT) methodology, Six Boxes^® Performance Thinking, to define their own performance, identify improvement opportunities, and build performance infrastructure in the form of clearer expectations and regular feedback, better processes and tools, and more relevant consequences, all while developing their own skills and knowledge and conducting client projects using the methodology. This article summarizes the context, process, and accomplishments to date, along with the lessons learned from this ongoing effort.     

Assessing the Acceptability of Problem-Solving Procedures by School Teams: Preliminary Development of the Pre-Referral Intervention Team Inventory

The responses of 472 educators were used to develop the Pre-Referral Intervention Team Inventory (PRITI), a 24-item Likert scale. Principal axis analyses resulted in a one-dimensional structure with high internal consistency that explained 57% of the total variance. Acceptability of team procedures was strongly and positively correlated with a measure of team members' interaction practices and negatively related to professional stress. These results suggest that (a) pending further analyses and development, the PRITI may prove useful for assessing school staff acceptability perceptions of pre-referral team consultation procedures and (b) team process variables are important predictors of the acceptability of pre-referral team consultation procedures to educators. Directions for future research are proposed.     

The Contract Negotiation Stage of a School-Based,Cross-Cultural Organizational Consultation: A Case Study

This article draws on organizational and cross-cultural consultation tenets, to analyze the contract negotiation of a school reform initiative by focusing on the contracting and cross-cultural issues that emerge at that stage. A case from one school presents illustrative examples generated and grounded by qualitative methodology using participant observation, semistructured interviews, extant records, and researcher logs. Themes related to contract negotiation that were derived from the analysis include conflicting expectations and beliefs; dissatisfactions with procedures and policies; lack of empowerment; pedagogical dissonance; and feelings of blame, inadequacy, and racism. This case highlights problems that can occur in school-based, cross-cultural organizational consultation when a rigid adherence to the content of consultation overshadows the consultation process. It is suggested that framing consultation as a coconstructed, participatory process that includes consensual contract negotiation may promote successful school reform. This is significant when the consultants and consultees do not share common cultural reference points. It is argued that consultants who value cultural reciprocity between themselves and consultees while being intentional in their use of process skills have the best potential to effect sustainable school-based change.     

Developing the spoken language skills of reception class children in two multicultural,inner‐city primary schools

This article describes a small‐scale study which emanated from the concern of the head teachers and staff of two primary schools serving deprived, multicultural areas of an inner city. The concern of the staff related to the level of their pupils' spoken language skills through the schools and the perceived impact that this has on pupils learning more widely. The article explores the nature and importance of oral language development in the early years and describes an intervention designed to enhance the spoken language skills of the reception children. The pre‐intervention scores of the children at school entry indicated that the language skills of the children were less well developed than those of the general population. The findings suggest that the intervention had a positive effect on the speaking and listening skills of the reception children and that the teachers' involvement in the research contributed to their professional development.