Book dossier

School consultation

by William P. Erchul, Carole E.R. Pitcairn

This integrative volume offers a systematic approach to school consultation unlike those previously published. Erchul and Martens combine the most useful and empirically validated principles from mental health and behavioral consultation with practices shown to be effective in contemporary consultation research (i.e., behavior analysis, social influence, and social support). In so doing, the authors view the practice of school consultation as the accomplishment of three interrelated tasks: problem solving, social influence, and professional support and development. School Consultation describes the fundamentals of practice and fully explores processes and potential outcomes. Special attention is paid to the needs of first-time consultants, who are given advice on how to select school-based interventions and to assess their effectiveness in terms of treatment outcome, integrity, and social validity. The authors show that the school is a large organization providing a range of services, and that the delivery of these services is influenced at once by legislation, the limitations of educational approaches to classification, and the challenges and rewards facing individual teachers. School Consultation is an important resource for school consultants, clinical child psychologists, school psychologists, educational specialists, counselors, special educators, and school social workers, as well as consultation researchers, university trainers, and students in graduate-level consultation courses.