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 ...