The Pragmatics of Team Consultation Practice: The Role of the School Psychologist as Change Agent

The Pragmatics of Team Consultation Practice: The Role of the School Psychologist as Change Agent

The Pragmatics of Team Consultation Practice: The Role of the School Psychologist as Change Agent

Concept Paper

Submitted to Northcentral University

Graduate Faculty of the School of Education

In Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

by

ROSEMARIE RICHARDSON

Prescott Valley, Arizona

April 2010

Table of Contents

Table of Contents3

Introduction3

Problem Statement5

Purpose Statement7

Research Questions10

Nul Hypothesis11

Review of related Literature11

Standards of Skills competence14

How are school psychologists already using consultation skills?17

Methodology19

Origins of Quantitative Methodology20

Historical Background21

Philosophical Foundation21

Concepts and Underlying Principles22

Probability and Chance22

Variability23

Types of Quantitative Methods24

Statistical Procedures24

Measurement Procedures25

The Future of Quantitative Methodology25

Participants26

Demographics29

Instrumentation30

Communication and Collaboration33

Data Management33

Ethical issues of school counseling and consultation skills34

Multimedia34

Operating Systems35

World Wide Web35

Website Development35

Word Processing36

Procedures36

Data analysis37

Results37

Discussion43

Conclusion46

Reference48

Annotated Bibliography52

Introduction

In an era of proposed change for the practice of school psychology, one of the most important roles is to help build capacity of schools to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse and needy population. school psychologists are in a unique position to impact the tailoring of instruction to meet the needs of individual students. The legal protections offered by special education laws, although badly needed at the time of the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, have become an ineffective morass of rules and regulations that often contradict effective instructional practices (Wizda, 2004). Although emanating from the best of intentions, the dual influences of a commitment to compulsory education for all students and concerns for individual learners have led to a rapid expansion of special education services (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1985). This rapid growth for the practice of school psychology has, in many cases, reduced the role of school psychologists to traditional assessment activities for determination of special education eligibility. Because assessment is a mandated function on which placement decisions are made, school districts and administrators often view it as the most important duty of school psychologists (Abel and Burke, 1985; Hartshorn and Johnson, 1985; Kovaleski, 1988).

Since practice changes begin at the individual level, there is increasing need to train school psychologists in consultation skills and support the use of those skills to generate positive changes for students, schools, and families. Unfortunately, in addition to limiting the scope of activities of school psychologists, the narrow focus on assessment to determine special education eligibility also leads to viewing the source of a learning problem as something located within students rather than as a function of a variety of alterable ecological factors such as learning environments or modes of instruction (Sarason, 1988, 1997). The situation is perpetuated by the fact that much of the initial course work in training programs centers on assessment and the arrival of new assessment instruments is heralded with considerable fanfare (Wizda, 2004). This continues despite doubt as to the diagnostic relevance of traditional test results in isolation (Reschly, 1998; Shapiro, 1999). To identify the specific skills practitioners and administrators perceive as being needed in today's schools, and to ascertain the type of training available for the individual ...