Consultation Articles and Reviews

Shobana Musti-Rao, Renee O. Hawkins, Carol Tan (2011):

A Practitioner’s Guide to consultation and Problem Solving in Inclusive Settings

TEACHING Exceptional Children, Vol. 44 No 1, pp 18-26.

This article talks about response to intervention (RTI) using a Problem-Solving Consultation Process. This process uses research based interventions for both academics and behavioral domains.  The example in the article of implementation was from a Secondary School in Singapore.  The teacher Mr. Ong had been teaching Language Arts at the secondary level for 9 years. At the time of the implementation Mr. Omg had 20 students who where challenging, in a class, this is about ½ the class. He felt he was spending more time managing behaviors than teaching the curriculum.  He contacted the local university that was working with teachers implementing the Problem-Solving Consultation Process.  There are 5 stages to the process. Mr. Omg started with Stage 1 Relation Building Process.   In this stage the problem –solving team meet to get acquainted discuss the problem, the interventions that have been taken up to this point. They set up a time for the consulting teacher to come observe the classroom and meeting times.  Stage 2 Problem Identification, after the classroom visit the team meets to discuss the problem and allows the consultant to ask the teacher more specific questions about the problem. The team works together using the data the consultant and the teacher has compiled to identify the problem, the antecedents that lead up to the problem. Stage 3 Problem Analysis this stage allows the team to meet again and analyze the data taken by the consultant as well as the teacher that causes the behavior, identify target students and develop a system for ongoing data collection, and find interventions to address the problem. Stage 4 Program Implementation, during this stage the teacher and consultant work together to develop and implement a reasearch based intervention to address the problem.  Importance in this step is that the teacher implements the plan with fidelity and continues to collect data regarding the results of the plan.  During this stage the consultant visits the class to observe the teachers implementation as well as the students’ behavior.  Stage 5 Program Evaluation, this stage consists of the teacher and consultant meeting once again to analysis the results of the intervention.  If intervention plan is not working the team will repeat stages 3 – 5 using other research based interventions.

Donna Umhoefer, Robbi Beyer & Tiffanye M. Vargas (2012)

Theory in Practice: Enhancing General Physical Educators’ Teacher Efficacy

when working with All Students, Strategies:

 A Journal for Physical and Sport Educators, 25:7, 32-37

This article is written to give strategies to administrators, teachers and support personnel to

Help General Education Physical Education Teachers (GPE) to increase their efficacy when working with

Children with disabilities in a full inclusion P.E. program. In a 1990 study Hoy & Wool folk surveyed 191

student teachers regarding teacher efficacy using the Teacher Efficacy Scale (Gibson & Dembo, 1984) and two questioners from Rand Corporation.  The results indicated that the teachers who did student teaching practicum had a greater impact on their teacher efficacy then those who didn’t.  Although personal teaching experience increases the teacher efficacy, modeling enhances the self efficacy, class management, and disciplinary techniques of pre-service teachers (Gutkin, Wilson and Oats (1996). This technique is helpful for GPE teachers as well; by collaborating with Adapted Physical Education Teachers (APE) they will increase their efficacy in working with children with disabilities. Using collaborative delivery approach the APE teacher can work with the GPE teacher demonstrating how to implement the accommodations and modifications. The GPE than has the opportunity to follow the model given, by receiving praise and constructive input along with self talk the GPE increases his confidence and abilities to work with the students with disabilities. The APE teacher works collaboratively with the GPE and the IEP team to insure the IEP goals and bench marks are attainable, again modeling for the GPE and increasing his confidence in the IEP process.  The premise is teacher efficacy increases the teacher’s instructional ability and student achievement.

Adapted Physical Educators: The Multiple Roles of Consultants

Rebecca K. Lytle and Gayle E. Hutchinson

California State University, Chico

This article looked at the shift in roles involving Adapted Physical Educators and how this used to look years ago. They looked at 6 teachers, 4 females and 2 males, each with experience ranging from 3-21 years.

 Adapter Physical Educators were once providing direct instruction to their students, but are now working more with teachers providing consult regarding assessments or information, but are not working directly with the kids.  Findings show that educators prefer the “collaboration consultation model” as it gives each educator equal responsibilities with one common goal.  Adapted Physical Educators have long been using consultations in their practices by discussing with various team members on whether or not the child is making progress on their IEP goal(s). This has been going on even if the student is receiving direct instruction.  There was no true breakdown of components involved in consultation services, meaning there was no specific findings listings what a APE consultants responsibilities entailed.  Some research showed that SOME of these responsibilities would include: facilitator, validator and coach (etc.).  Some research show the breakdown of roles into four roles: trainer/educator, advocacy, process specialist and fact finder. The article goes on to discuss the method of research, each participant and his/her backgrounds, data collection and analysis and the findings of the research.