School Consultation: Conceptual and Empirical Bases of Practice, Second Edition (Issues in Clinical Child Psychology)

School consultation is a process for providing psychological and educational services in which a specialist (consultant) works cooperatively with a staff member (consultee) to improve the learning and adjustment of a student (client) or a group of students. During face-to-face interactions, the consultant helps the consultee through systematic problem solving, social influence, and professional support. In turn, the consultee helps the client by selecting, implementing, and evaluating school-based interventions. In all cases, school consultation serves a remedial function and has the potential to serve a preventive function. In this volume, the authors offer a systematic approach to school consultation that differs from those that have been published previously. Specifically, the authors combine the most useful and/or empirically validated principles from mental health and behavioral consultation with practices shown to be effective in contemporary consultation research (i.e. behavior analysis, social influence, and implementation support). In so doing, the authors describe for the first-time consultant when and how to apply these principles in response to a wide range of consultee and client needs, and offer a thorough discussion of the realities inherent in providing services within a school organizational context. This second edition also includes expanded coverage on the following of the 1997 IDEA Amendments for school consultation; -empirically validated approaches to the support and development task; -methods for conducting a functional behavioral assessment; -a listing of instructional interventions; -teacher shortage, recruitment and retention issues; -prereferral intervention teams and programs; -strategies to increase teacher skill transfer and maintenance; and -inclusion of new research studies that inform the effective practice of school consultation.