Consultation - 2 / Diversity

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Diversity

Strategies for working with those of other cultures.

1) Understand your own culture and belief systems. Know your biases, what is difficult for you, etc. (Ex. If you have gone through a lot of deaths, maybe dealing with death is hard.

2) Develop knowledge of other cultures.
Read, emersion, ask peeps.

3) Understand what their level of acculturation is.

Five levels of acculturation – not everyone goes through all levels:
1. Conformity – behaviour that devalues the cultural differences, while at the same time praising the dominate culture. (Ex. People from Cuba have this idealistic vision of life in the US, and therefore greatly value American culture when they first come over, wanting to leave everything behind.
2. Dissonance – occurs when there becomes some intra-psychic conflict. People start to realize value in their original culture.
3. Resistance and Emersion – time in which you start appreciating the cultural differences, and may have some disdain for the majority culture.
4. Introspection – time when you are exploring your own attitudes, increasing your liking of yourself and your cultural background and differences.
5. Synergetic Articulation and Awareness – You appreciate the differences of your own culture and you appreciate aspects of the majority culture.

4) Develop confidence in communication, both verbal and non-verbal

Meaning is derived from shared experiences, backgrounds, etc. People from a different background might perceive specific details, elaboration, etc. as insensitive and elaboratistic.

Asian/Native American/African American/ Latino cultures prefer less detail, and more experience in conversation (High context communication preferences)

Cultures with low context communication preferences derive meaning from direct, precise, logical verbal interchanges. – More the way schools operate in the US. – would feel uncomfortable with personal communication, silence, obscure phrases, or unfamiliar gesturing. European American, Swiss, German, etc. cultures tend to be this way.

5) Follow the principals of cultural competence in consultation skills.
1. Establish rapport and build trust and display respect.
2. Identify the presenting problem by listening carefully and viewing it from the presenter’s perspective.
3. Learn the family systems. Let the family educate you about their beliefs, child rearing practices, etc. Don’t assume!

Teacher Consultation

Critical to understand what goes on with teachers, why they think the way they do.

Stressful aspects of the lives of teachers: days are over-planned, run by bells. Curriculum mapping – limits creativity. A variety of students in one class can be stressful, esp. when individual students can be a full time job. Social problems of students. Discipline. Great number of assessments required by some teachers. Proficiencies. Accountability. Committee requirements.

Satisfying aspects of teacher’s lives: In the structure, you can still be creative and have autonomy. Kids are cute. You can see progress being made.

Stages of Concern
Usually when you are trying to solve a problem, the key is to come up with something new (to not change, means to continue in what has the problem).

Know where the person you are working with stands with new innovations. Is it new to them?

Hall and Hord (1987) – Theory of Innovation and Change

The first two stages involve thinking about the self.

The first is informational. We have limited information. So we need the basic information.

The second stage involves thinking about personal demands. Will I be able to do it? Will I have the energy and resources?

The third stage involves thinking about the task. Management. How will I do it? How will I evaluate the outcomes? How relevant is it to my students or what I am trying to accomplish?

The fourth stage is the impact stage. What is the consequence of implementing the intervention. What kind of outcomes can we expect? Will they be positive or negative? Will they improve the situation?

How will we collaborate with others?

Refocusing: Do we need to make changes based on what we see so far.

Theory about the levels of use for an innovation. (Hall and Hord)

1. Nonuse (the innovation has not been used)
2. Orientation (going over what we will be doing)
3. Preparation (getting ready to use it – training)
4. Mechanical Use (focus on day to day operations)
5. Routine (once the innovation has become stabilized)
6. Refinement (innovation is varied to increase the impact)
7. Integration (becomes integrated with the rest of the system)
8. Renewal (reevaluating and modification, if needed)

Mental Health Consultation – The Process.

Gerald Caplan – father of mental health consultation *know for Praxis! – invented consultation out of necessity. In wartime, trained lesser trained folks (nurses, etc.) so they could work directly with soldiers.

Mental Health Consultation – helping the care giving agents to accomplish whatever the goals are. –This is like helping the teacher for the child’s betterment, not helping the child directly. This is because the teacher has the ultimate responsibility for the child. You must understand the situation of the teacher to do this.

Help the consultees (teachers) deal with the personality factors that interfere with their professional functioning and reduce their effectiveness with their client.

Basic concepts and assumptions in mental health consultation:
• Mental health consultation is a method for use between two professionals with respect with a lay client or a program for such clients.
• The work must be in the mental health area relating to (a) mental health disorder or a personality idiosyncrasies of the client (b) promotion of mental health in the client or (c) interpersonal aspects of the work situation. The consultant must have expert knowledge in these areas.
• The consultant has no administrative responsibilities for the consultee’s work or professional responsibility for the outcome of the client’s case. (this takes the pressure off)
• The consultee is under no obligation to accept the consultant’s ideas or suggestions.
• The relationship between the two is coordinate. There is no hierarchy, both the consultant and consultee are equal.
• The relationship is fostered because the consultant is coming from another profession into the consultee’s institution. (it’s not quite like this with school psychologists)
• Consultation usually consists of a short series of interviews which take place intermittently in response to the consultee’s need for help for a work problem.
• Increasing confidence and sophistication of consultees and their own profession increase the likelihood of their recognizing mental health complications and asking for consultation.
• A consultant has no predetermined body of information. Rather, he responds to the needs of the consultee.
• Two goals of consultation: (a) to help the consultee improve his handling or understanding of the current work difficulty, and (b) use this understanding to increase his capacity to master future similar problems.
• The aim is to improve the consultee’s job performance, not his sense of well-being. However, those two things are linked, therefore, increasing one increases the other, so you will have to deal with both issues.
• Consultation does not focus overtly on personal problems and feelings of the consultee. It respects privacy.
• This does not mean you don’t pay attention to these issues. You do need to be sensitive to these issues and how these issues effect the outcome of what you are trying to accomplish.
• Consultation is only one of the professional functions of the specialist. It is a tool, not who you are.

Distinguish between types of consultation.

	Client Centered	Consultee Centered	Program Centered Administration	Consultee Centered Administration
Focus	Specific Client	Consultee	Improving the program	Consultee’s functioning within the program.
Goal	Improve Client Situation	Educate the consultee using the client problem as a lever	Develop or improve a program or policy	Help that person improve their performance within the program
Consultant Role & Responsibility	Meet with the consultee’s client to help diagnose the problem (direct service)	Almost never meet with the consultee’s client.	Meet with groups and individuals to access a problem and develop a plan for administrative change	Meet with groups and individuals to help them develop better problem solving skills and serve as a catalyst for action.

Info about Caplan’s beliefs: Fundamental assumptions he held.
• Consultation has to address intra-psychic and environmental factors.
• More than technical expertise is needed to design effective interventions.
• Learning and generalization occur when consultees take responsibility for action.
• Mental health consultation supplements other problem solving mechanisms within an organization.
• Consultee attitudes and affect are important in consultation but can’t be dealt with directly.

Sources of difficulty in consultation.

Lack of objectivity.
Five general ways that consultees might lack objectivity:
1. Direct personal involvement.
• Consultees may be too involved. Point out to the consultee the importance of the client learning appropriate from inappropriate behavoiur. Have the consultant acts as a role model
2. Simple identification. (the consultee *teacher* identifies with the client’s *student’s* problem
• The consultant should model objectivity in the consultation session.
3. Transference – projecting your own feelings onto the client.
• Ask the consultee to observe the child more closely, and take an objective view. (Is that really what is going on?)
4. Characteralogical Distortion. (extreme). The consultee’s personality interferes with professional functioning.
• This will require other, professional counseling
5. Theme interference. (Represents unresolved problems that the consultee has experienced. The client will think that all “A” will eventually lead to “B”)
• Unlinking (Caplan) (has a temporary effect) – requires that the consultant to influence the consultee to see that client differently.
• Theme interference introduction (Caplan) – brings about longer term improvement. The consultant accepts the consultee’s premise and then persuades the consultee that the outcome is not evitable. (“A” does not always lead to “B”)

Levels of Service in Schools.

1. The focus is on the child
2. The focus is on the teacher
3. The focus is on the system

Conflict experienced by teachers:

• Authority conflict – teacher has ambivalent feelings about the need for control in the classroom verses being liked by the students.
• Dependency – teachers might require excessive obedience from students and the teacher could relate to authorities in the same way.
• Anger and hostility – the teacher has anger and hostility but they feel guilty because they know they should not.
• Identification – teachers identify with the student and fail to see situations objectively.

Adlerian Consultation.

Human beings are embedded in the social context; they operate on the basis of subjective reality, and they function holistically. They are oriented to the goal of “fictional finalism” (we are always working for this perfect end, but never reaching because it changes once we think we reach it). They have the creative power to control their own destiny.

-Drieikurs – Said that there were four goals for disturbing behaviours. It is important to -understand these goals because it could be beneficial to understanding certain child’s behaviours.

Four goals of disturbing behaviour:
1. Attention
2. Power
3. Revenge
4. Withdrawal

Mosak – Talked about goals of misguided behaviours in the realm of adults.
Mosak said that adults may be motivated the way they are because of:
• Overgeneralization
• Belief in impossible goals
• Misconceptions about life
• Adults might deny their own worth
• Faulty values

Preventative Consultation Approaches:

Principles of encouragement.
• Encouragement - acceptance (UPR)
• Separating the act from the act.
• Effort is more important than outcome.
• Present functioning is more important than past functioning.
• Emphasize the intrinsic nature instead of the extrinsic.
• The individual is important in his or her own regard.

Practice Democratic Principles (reject competition and encourage cooperation)
Development of competencies – don’t over praise the child.
It’s important to provide natural and logical consequences.

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Behavioral Consultation

Kratochwill.

The goals of behavioral consultation are to provide a change in client behavior. In order to do behavioral consultation, you need to be able to define the behavior in operational terms.

An operational definition is a way of describing behavior so that it is broken down into observable and recordable events. (Ex. A child’s aggressiveness might be defined as an activity in which a child inflicts bodily damage or pain on another person. This can be counted. “Aggressive” can not be counted. Hitting another child in the face can.

Stages and problem solving process. (four stages)

Stage 1: Problem Identification.
- Identify the problem of concern
- Develop procedures to measure baseline.
- Establish that there is a discrepancy between the present level of performance and the desired level of performance.

Stage 2: Problem Analyses
- Interview used to identify variables that might facilitate the problem solution and to develop a plan to solve the problem.

Stage 3: Treatment Implementation.
- Data collection continues
- Goal of the consultant is to insure that the intervention is implemented with integrity.

Stage 4: Treatment evaluation.
- Determine whether the problem has been solved.

Problem centered consultation calls for action related to a limited number of specific behaviours of immediate concern to the consultee.

Developmental consultation is concerned with changes in behavior that require a relatively long time to treat (a process broken down into smaller units which will gradually build up to the final result you are looking for).

In Problem centered consultation:
1. Establish objectives
2. Select a measure of client performance
3. Collect data (not being biased is important)
4. Display data
5. Define the problem by showing the discrepancy between the current level of performance and the desired level of performance.

Different ways of gathering data:
• Interview
• Test
• Record review
• Observation

Establishing objectives:
Good objectives must do several things:
• Must specify the activity required to achieve the objective
• Must indicate the level of performance required for obtainment of the objective
• Must say who the person is who is to achieve the objective
• Identify the conditions under which the performance of the objective is to occur
• A deadline for achieving the objective

In Developmental Consultation:
1. Identify broad objectives (Ex. A child needs to achieve confidence in certain situations.
2. Identify subordinate objectives. (objectives form a hierarchy.) (Ex. The child displays less verbal self criticism.
3. Look at performance objectives – very specific goal directed activities which include three things: (1) a behavioral description of the activity desired which specifies in observable terms the actions to be taken toward the accomplishment of the objective, (2) the specification of performance conditions, and (3) a precise indication of the performance levels desired. (Ex. To completely stop making self-critical comments at home and in informal gatherings with friends and with teachers.

Filed under: EDC 510-511 Consultation in Schools and Practicum
Copyright: September, 2003 - David Profitt