Training professional psychologists in school-based consultation: What the syllabi suggest.

Abstract

This article reports the findings from consultation syllabi from 25 American Psychological Associationapproved school psychology programs (40% response rate). Most responding programs offered 1 consultation course and many programs' syllabi stated expecting students to conduct 1 consultation case. The analysis showed most syllabi listed training in multiple models of consultation, with almost all mentioning the problem-solving model. Almost all syllabi listed training in treatment, but fewer than half suggested that students would learn about the use of consultation to promote prevention. Most programs' syllabi mentioned considering others' culture in consultation, whereas fewer than half mentioned considering the impact of the consultant's culture in consultation relationships and even fewer mentioned social justice. The discussion addresses the need for a better understanding of school-based consultation preservice training, consultation training in a diverse and inequitable world, and how practitioners' cognitive appraisals of consultation services could inform school-based consultation training. Considerations for consultation syllabi design are given.

A Grounded Theory Study of Supervision of Preservice Consultation Training

“…Investigations regarding school-based consultation training practices have pointed to deficiencies in applied consultation experiences, supervision practices, and attention given to process issues (Anton-LaHart & Rosenfield, 2004;Hazel et al, 2010). Data from the current study provide preliminary evidence that a gap in consultation training practices such as supervision may be problematic.…”

“…Both Anton-LaHart and Rosenfield (2004) and Hazel et al (2010) found that courses tended to cover a variety of models of consultation rather than honing in on a particular model in depth. Both sets of authors suggested that a broad focus may be detrimental to consultation training, especially when combined with inconsistent or superficial supervision practices.…”

“…In syllabi where students were required to complete an applied consultation case, elements representative of recommended clinical supervision practices (e.g., Bernard & Goodyear, 2009) were not uniformly in place, including audiotaping or videotaping of consultation sessions (47%), composition of reflective journals (35%), reflective analysis of one or more consultation meetings (12%), and transcribing consultation case sessions (12%). Hazel et al (2010) noted four themes conveyed by the syllabi: (a) students were exposed to multiple consultation models; (b) consultation training focused predominately on treatment as opposed to primary prevention, risk reduction, or early intervention; (c) some course syllabi (8%) addressed consultation solely with regard to direct service delivery even though consultation is defined as an indirect service delivery approach; and (d) consideration given to issues of diversity and social justice varied greatly across syllabi.…”

“…Some of the clinical supervision techniques described by Bernard and Goodyear (2009) include supervisee self-report, process and case notes, audiotapes and videotapes of supervisees during fieldwork, and ongoing supervisee reflection. Such practices are not consistently applied in preservice level school-based consultation training (Anton-LaHart & Rosenfield, 2004;Hazel et al, 2010). …”

“…Specific supervision techniques were also infrequently applied; for instance, only 9% of responding programs required CITs to audiotape or videotape consultation sessions (Anton-LaHart & Rosenfield, 2004). More recently, Hazel, Laviolette, and Lineman (2010) examined consultation course syllabi from 25 (40% of all programs solicited for participation) Downloaded by [University of Guelph] at 08:14 29 November 2014 school psychology programs approved by the American Psychological Association (APA). The authors found that 88% of syllabi indicated students received one full consultation course or more and 68% listed one or more consultation cases as a course requirement.…”