School Consultation (Part I)

Abstract

This article is the first in a two-part series on school consultation, from an interdisciplinary perspective. The authors examine school consultation as it has been studied and applied in learning disabilities and in special education as well as in the related professions of school and community psychology, counseling, and organizational development. Part I is a review and analysis of various theories, models, and related research on school consultation, with emphasis on a planned progression from theory formulation to model building to implementation of basic and applied research. The authors question whether or not consultation has a theoretical base. They conclude that a distinction must be made between underlying knowledge bases used to solve problems in the consultation process and underlying theories about the consultation process itself which direct the communicative/interactive nature of the relationship between consultants and consultees. Also included are (a) an examination of 10 different models of consultation and how they relate or fail to relate to theory, and (b) a review of studies which pertain to facilitating mainstreamed education of learning disabled and other exceptional and low achieving students, organized by input, process, and outcome variables. We project a set of future directions for interdisciplinary research on school consultation which are applicable both in special education and across the related professions, and which call for coordinated research efforts among all of these professions.