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.     

Home–School Agreements: A tool for parental control or for partnership?

Home-school agreements are part of the present government's School Standards and Framework Act (1998), which stipulated their completion by September 1999. In the present study, the arguments for and against home-school agreements are weighed up in the light of the results of a piece of research involving four inner-city primary schools. Following a consultation process in each school, written home-school agreements were produced on the basis of parents', children's and teachers' views on each other's areas of responsibilities (targets). During the evaluation phase, parents and children overwhelmingly expressed that they thought home-school agreements were useful and helped to enhance trust and understanding between parents and their school. A model for setting up or reviewing home-school agreements is proposed on the basis of the research findings. Implications for working with parents and further developing the role and power of parents in schools are illustrated. Systemic strategies that educational psychologists can use to enhance the relationship between school and parents are also outlined.     

The aims of intervention

This article discusses five major points that are important to consider before implementing consultation techniques in the school setting. The five points are: (a) definition of a personal intervention philosophy, (b) realization of one's theoretical biases, (c) awareness of the ecology and topology of the setting in which the intervention is being delivered, (d) recognition of the importance of one's communication and relational skills, and (e) the importance of linking intervention to assessment. Consultants are also encouraged to think carefully about their intervention techniques, urged to follow a collaborative consultation model, and reminded of Whitehead's (1929) notion that Life in all its manifestations should be the subject matter for education.     

Culturally Responsive Consultation Among Practicing School Psychologists

ABSTRACT

School-based consultation has garnered increasing attention relevant to culturally responsive practice in school psychology. Although prior research has investigated school psychologists’ experiences with supporting culturally diverse youth through school-based consultation, few studies have utilized an established framework to understand school psychologists’ experiences. We utilized specific components of Ingraham’s Multicultural School Consultation framework to examine fifteen school psychologists’ experiences with providing culturally responsive consultation. Constant comparative analysis revealed the various strategies used by practitioners to support culturally diverse students throughout the consultation process (e.g., involving multiple people in decision-making, using non-confrontational approaches to educate school personnel about cultural dynamics, providing messages of support and encouragement to diverse students and families) and the socio-contextual barriers to their practice (e.g., cultural minimization, lack of administrative support). Implications for research, training, and school-based practice are discussed.     

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.     

A multicultural,gender, and sexually diverse affirming school-based consultation framework

Gender and sexually diverse (GSD) students face unique challenges in schools due to the privileging of cisgender and heterosexist norms in these settings. In particular, GSD youth who belong to ethnically and racially minoritized groups face further challenges within school environments that disregard their cultural contexts and intersectional identities. It is important for school psychologists to ensure safe and high-quality mental health, educational, and behavioral supports for these students. One possible avenue for building these types of supports is through school consultation. When school psychologists collaborate with other professionals in a culturally competent, participatory way, their work has the potential to bolster behavioral, academic, and mental health outcomes at the individual, group, and/or systems levels. Adapting Ingraham's multicultural school consultation model, this article proposes a multicultural, GSD affirming school consultation framework that also approaches the experiences of racially and ethnically minoritized individuals through the lenses of intersectionality and minority stress frameworks. Across its five domains, this adapted framework aims to give practitioners and researchers a conceptual foundation to support GSD students of minoritized ethnic and racial identities by considering interactions among consultants, consultees, and clients within their wider school contexts.     

Expanding Problem-Solving Consultation Training: Prospects and Frameworks

Core characteristics of problem-solving consultation research, theory, and practice in psychology and education are reevaluated within the context of consultation training agendas. Features of problem-solving consultation must be reconceptualized for advances to occur in future consultation training. Specifically, the consultant-consultee relationship, coordinate power status, consultee's right to reject the consultant's suggestions, involvement of the consultee in the consultation process, the voluntary nature of consultation, and ethical issues are discussed within a broadened framework for consultation training that emphasizes a process in which consultation services can occur on a variety of consultee-client dimensions. These dimensions include case-centered consultation (e.g., teacher-based consultation, parent-based consultation, conjoint parent-teacher consultation, child-based consultation, and peer-mediated consultation), technology training with teachers and parents, and organizational consultation. The expanded conceptual framework for consultation involves not only a reconceptualization of traditional problem-solving consultation core characteristics for practice, but also agendas for new areas within consultation training curricula at both the preservice and inservice levels. Moreover, such a broadened framework demonstrates the necessity for incorporating empirical research from other areas of psychology, education, and organizational management within the area of school consultation.     

Extending Curriculum‐based Assessment to Early Writing

Early writing interventions can help students develop the writing skills they need to experience positive educational and postsecondary outcomes, but effective intervention requires instructionally relevant assessment data. Shapiro's curriculum‐based assessment (CBA) model integrates related yet distinct CBA approaches into a model that informs intervention. Extending this model to early writing poses challenges only recently addressed by research. On the basis of a review of relevant early writing research, this article outlines an instructionally relevant assessment model for early writing. Within the proposed model, the instructional hierarchy is suggested to directly connect early writing assessment with intervention. A discussion of potential limitations as well as future directions for research is included.     

Teacher Consultation to Enhance Implementation of School-Based Restorative Justice

ABSTRACT

Restorative justice (RJ) is an alternative approach to school discipline that has been gaining recognition in the public and academic spheres as a way to engage students who misbehave in school. RJ has promise to address racial/ethnic, gender, and disability disproportionality in school discipline. One aspect of school-based RJ that has received almost no attention in the literature is the professional development and ongoing support of teachers in schools using RJ. This article provides a review of extant literature on school-based RJ, teacher training, and consultation methods. Integrating the empirical literature on school consultation and teacher professional development, we argue that schools should implement a multitiered model of professional development to build teacher competency in RJ, specifically including the use of targeted teacher consultation. The proposed model is complementary to an RJ framework, systematic, and capable of evaluation; future research is needed to evaluate its effectiveness in practice.     

School psychologists and the practice of consultation

This article reports the results of an investigation of the consultation practices of school psychologists. It was found that consultation is one of the school psychologist's major professional functions, and that psychologists feel that other school personnel want them to spend more of their professional time consulting than they do at present. Client-centered consultation is the dominant variety practiced by the respondents, and they tend to conceptualize their consultation efforts in a humanistic (Rogerian) or behavioristic framework. Age and salary are factors in the amount and type of consultation done. Most of the respondents had little formal training in consultation and have learned what they know on the job.     

How does community matter? Misrecognition and the participation agenda for children in socially disadvantaged communities

Participatory research with young people has enjoyed a decade of sustained development including the development of a range of embodied and visual methodologies. Much of this has been in the service of a participatory citizenship agenda, as articulated in the Every Child Matters agenda in England, in the work of the UK's Children's Commissioners and through service provider commitment to consultation with young people more generally. However throughout this period there has also been a sustained critique of the UK Government's citizenship agenda for young people, and consequently of the role of participatory research and consultation processes within this. Much of this critique questions what kind of citizenship young people are being asked to participate in, juxtaposing the construction of ‘inclusive’ participatory spaces with an increasingly stratified and exclusionary context for participation in the social and economic arenas of society. This article reflects on this debate using material from a two-year ethnographic project with a small group of year six and seven primary school girls from a Scottish urban area long designated as having a high concentration of people struggling with socio-economic disadvantage and exclusion. The project blended the more traditional ethnographic approach of observation and reflection with a series of participatory activities with the group. These activities took place within an after school club which they named ‘Community Matters’. This article examines the various activities of the club and the differing meanings of and associations with ‘community’ that the girls depicted and discussed. These situated meanings are then contrasted to the assumptions that underpin children's role within the evaluation systems that govern services to children.     

Medical diagnostic consultation concerning mental retardation: An analogue study of school psychologists' attitudes

Recent research of relevance to school psychologists suggests that the cause, or etiology, of mental retardation can be established by medical diagnosticians in approximately one‐half of cases. In the current study, 109 practicing school psychologists considered a hypothetical case of an elementary student with mental retardation and indicated their attitudes toward the use of medical consultation. School psychologists were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions defined by the amount of information about medical diagnostic consultations they received: (a) no information, (b) guidelines from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) calling for medical consultation in cases of developmental delay, or (c) AAN guidelines plus a concise summary of research on etiology, prevention, and mental retardation. School psychologists with more than 10 years of experience evidenced a more favorable attitude toward medical diagnostic consultation when provided more information, whereas their less experienced colleagues demonstrated no such pattern. This finding, together with others derived from participants' responses, is discussed regarding school psychologists' practice and training. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Behavioral objectives for psychological consultation in the school as evaluated by teachers and school psychologists

A set of behavioral objectives was developed for the consultant role of the school psychologist, based on Meyers' consultation model. A Likert-type questionnaire was developed to assess the degree to which teachers and school psychologists agreed upon the desirability and the actual accomplishment of these objectives. Based on a sample of 120 teachers and 83 school psychologists, it was found that both groups perceived a difference between the “desired” role and the role that school psychologists actually fulfill. However, there were also significant differences between teachers' and school psychologists' rating of the “actual” role, the school psychologists' rating agreeing more with the consultation model. Examination of individual items showed greater acceptance of objectives relating to Meyers' level of indirect service to the child, and less acceptance of Meyers' levels of direct service to the teacher and service to the school system.     

Micro-Analysis of Consultant and Consultee Verbal and Nonverbal Behaviors

The verbal and nonverbal communication behaviors of consultants and consultees were examined in this study. The problem identification interviews (Bergan, 1977) of two consultants and 20 consultees were videotaped as they discussed school problems being experienced by the consultees. A modified version of the Message Process category of Bergan's (1977) Consultation Analysis Record was employed to measure verbal behavior. Nonverbal behaviors (Facial, Voice, and Body) were assessed as either positive, negative, or neutral following the coding scheme employed by Gottman, Markman, and Notarious (1977). Consultant and consultee verbal and nonverbal behaviors were coded each 10 sec using a system of momentary time sampling. Preliminary mapping of consultation communication behaviors are presented. A more complex behavior code is suggested to better understand the nature of communication interactions during consultation sessions. Limitations of the' current study are examined and results are discussed in terms of implications for consultation practice and future research.     

The Dilemma of Pragmatics: Why Schools Don't Use Quality Team Consultation Practices

Research supports that school districts' prereferral consultation teams adhere less closely to quality consultation procedures and are less effective than those conducted through university research projects (e.g., Bahr, Whitten, Dieker, Kocarek, & Manson, 1999). This study investigated whether this finding might be due to incompatibilities between school settings and recommended team consultation practices. First, self-assessment surveys and case evaluation activities verified that teams in this school district-led project were not fully implementing research-recommended team consultation procedures. Then, focus group discussions verified through follow-up ratings were used to describe why the research-recommended procedures were not followed. Results suggest that school teams consider the recommended team consultation procedures to be unfamiliar, discrepant from existing staff roles, unnecessarily complex, and often inefficient. In too many cases, administrative support for team activities is inconsistent and the teams lack sufficient intervention resources to have an impact on student success. Team recommendations for improving the consultation procedures are discussed.     

Life satisfaction in children and youth: Empirical foundations and implications for school psychologists

A central component of positive psychology is subjective well‐being (SWB). One facet of SWB receiving increased research attention is children's perceived quality of life (PQOL). Existing research related to child and youth PQOL is reviewed, followed by a discussion of the implications of the research for school psychology practice. Research with children and adolescents reveals that PQOL has a wide ranging nomological network including personality, environmental, and activity variables. Furthermore, PQOL appears to mediate relationships between the environmental experiences of youth and problem behavior. Implications are discussed within the context of calls for greater attention by school psychologists to prevention, non‐traditional assessment, direct service, consultation with teachers and parents, diversity issues, and the science‐practice connection. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 81–93, 2004.     

Peripheral Voices: Parental involvement,social class,and educational disadvantage

This paper presents the views of working-class parents on home-school links. Group interviews with parents of pupils in a primary school in the disadvantaged areas scheme in the Republic of Ireland suggest that parental involvement in school is limited to the giving and receiving of information, restricted consultation, and engagement in some supplemental responsibilities. Although parents were interested, informed and concerned regarding their children's education, they felt excluded from participation in decision-making about school management and organisation, about matters that affected them personally and financially, and about their children's progress. We suggest that heterogeneity in working-class voice merits further research; that the gendered nature of parent-school links needs further refinement to take account of being a primary carer; and that hearing working-class parents' voices can increase understanding of how parent groupings occupy spaces that are relatively peripheral or proximal to the school site and to their children's experiences of schooling.     

Conceptual Foundations and Components of a Contextual Intervention to Promote Student Engagement During Early Adolescence: The Supporting Early Adolescent Learning and Social Success (SEALS) Model

Decades of research indicate that many early adolescents are at risk for developing significant school adjustment problems in the academic, behavioral, and social domains during the transition to middle school. The Supporting Early Adolescent Learning and Social Success (SEALS) model has been developed as a professional development and consultation program to train teachers in universal (Tier 1) instructional and classroom management strategies to address the correlated risks experienced by students during this time. This article reviews the conceptual foundations of the SEALS model, provides an overview of SEALS intervention components, describes the SEALS professional development training and consultation framework, reviews preliminary findings of the impact of SEALS in rural school settings in the United States, and discusses research needs and future directions regarding the use of the SEALS model.