Consultation, Collaboration, and Family-School Partnerships
Consultation is an indirect service: you improve student outcomes by changing what adults do.
Models and stages
- Behavioral consultation (Bergan): problem identification, problem analysis, plan implementation, problem evaluation - each stage ends with a written statement and data.
- Mental health consultation (Caplan): client-centered (the student), consultee-centered (the teacher's knowledge, skill, confidence, or objectivity), and program-centered administrative.
- Conjoint behavioral consultation (Sheridan) joins parents and teachers in a single problem-solving process.
- Consultation is voluntary and collaborative; the consultee owns the problem, the plan, and the decision to implement.
Family–school partnership
Epstein's six types of involvement: parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with the community. Barriers include schedules, language, transportation, prior negative school experiences, and differing expectations about a parent's role; home–school notes and joint meetings reduce them.
Communication skills
Paraphrase and summarize, ask before advising, use data to depersonalize disagreement, and manage resistance without confrontation.
Worked example
A fourth-grade teacher says, "He's just lazy - he shuts down whenever we write." A consultee-centered response avoids arguing: examine work samples and ABC data, then reframe the behavior as escape from a task that exceeds current writing fluency. Agreement on the reframe produces an intervention plan and a follow-up meeting with data, not a personality verdict.
Traps
- Imposing an expert solution and calling it collaboration.
- Skipping problem analysis to jump to a plan.
- Ignoring consultee beliefs, which predict implementation more than the plan's elegance.