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The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is a form of childhood sexual abuse involving the sexual exploitation of youth for economic gain. School-based CSEC prevention efforts have inc...

This commentary underscores efforts of this special issue to highlight concepts related to culture and cultural competence designed to broaden thinking about multicultural consultation through research, practice, and training. It does this by illustrating the insights presented regarding (a) cultural issues in training, (b) the effect of client-centered consultation procedures on supervision of multicultural cognitive behavior therapy, (c) interactions between social capital and cultural variables, and (d) the importance of culturally sensitive research models. Further, this commentary proposes the participatory culture-specific intervention model and organizational consultation as two frameworks that can be used to enhance cultural competence and multicultural consultation in ways that are consistent with the ideas presented in this special issue.

This article presents the conceptual foundations and specific features of an ecologically oriented model of school-based organizational consultation. We begin by providing an overview of ecological theory. This is followed by a brief description of a model of school-based organizational consultation with a special focus on the ecological elements of the approach. Next, several trends in educational service delivery (i.e., high-stakes educational assessment, Response to Intervention, Positive Behavior Supports, school climate, and social justice) that require substantial systemic changes are discussed. These trends highlight the need for effective ecological approaches to organizational consultation. We present recommendations regarding how an ecologically oriented model of school-based consultation might be used to facilitate systemic change efforts in relation to the educational trends discussed.

The purpose of this article is to engage in the debate about Blueprint III regarding practice and graduate education in school psychology. We use school-based consultation as a lens to uncover meaning and context in the Blueprint and give particular attention to the Blueprint authors' foregrounding of prevention as a basis for school psychological services, a comprehensive consultation model for school psychological services, integration of concepts derived from positive psychology and public health in school psychology, and culture in school-based consultation. We offer suggestions to address barriers that may impede implementation of some of the worthwhile initiatives delineated in the Blueprint and develop approaches to strengthen graduate education. We conclude with a proposed agenda for research that may ground, justify, and enhance the preservice and inservice implications of Blueprint III, resulting in a substantial and well-founded impact on the field. As the authors of Blueprint III intended, we ...

The Invitational Conference on the Future of School Psychology held at Indiana University in 2002 had implications for consultation. It addressed projected shortages in school psychologists that provide a rationale for service delivery models integrating consultation and prevention. The conference discussed the need for effective work with children, families, and professionals from diverse cultures; success in fostering productive home-school connections; optimal and ethical use of rapidly changing technologies; and the use of empirical evidence to inform practice. This article presents a model of consultation and prevention informed by recent research in positive psychology as well as public health models. This model is discussed in the context of these and other important developments in the field of school psychology.

Despite recent attention to shared decision making as an approach to school reform, relatively little research has been conducted on the topic, and much of that research has relied on interviews and field notes, rather than systematic observation of team functioning. This investigation integrated systematic observations and interviews. The purpose of this study was to describe the leadership behaviors exhibited by principals, team leaders, and other team members (teachers, parents, students). We defined leadership according to team member contributions to decisions (decision content, decision-making processes, and statement function, such as initiating topics and making suggestions). This investigation used a comparative case study approach to examine the shared decision-making teams from three schools during the teams' first year. Results revealed variability in leadership across the three teams. Two teams were characterized by positive group process procedures with active involvement from a number of te...

Prereferral intervention is an approach to the prevention of special education problems that, although frequently recommended in recent years, has not received sufficient attention as a research topic. The purpose of this article is to provide data descriptive of the typical procedures and the collaborative problem-solving processes used by the prereferral intervention teams in eight urban schools. In addition to describing the model and its implementation, this article provides data indicating educators' perceptions of the goals of these teams, and their strengths and weaknesses, as well as describing the nature of consultation that is provided to classroom teachers and offering recommendations for improving these teams. The qualitative data sources used in this research included surveys, interviews, and team observations. Surveys were administered to team members and teachers, followed by interviews with these two groups. This resulted in 134 surveys and 91 interviews that were available for analysis. A...

This article reviews Meyers' 1973 article, 'A Consultation Model for School Psychological Services,' which proposed a model of school-based consultation. Key components from the original article are discussed, including: (a) four variables reflecting the process of interaction between consultant and consultee and (b) a description of the content of consultation based on four different approaches to school-based consultation. Each of these components is discussed by considering how it is used in schools, how it has evolved in the past 20 years, and how it is conceptualized at the present time. Particular focus is given to the influence of current social conditions and to directions for research regarding school-based consultation.

In this study, pull-in and pull-out approaches to delivering reading services to elementary special education and remedial students were compared. Students' reading activities were observed using a revision of the Student-Level Observation of Beginning Reading (SOBR-R), and reading comprehension assessed using the Stanford Achievement Test. Students in pull-in programs did not differ from students in pull-out programs in gains in reading comprehension. Pull-in and pull-out approaches did not differ in total time devoted to reading instruction each week, but there were differences in time spent on non-reading activities. Time spent on reading and non-reading activities did not predict reading achievement. Data are also presented documenting how reading instruction time is spent in six different models of pull-in and pull-out, to illustrate the variability within each approach to service delivery. It is suggested that these differences in how teachers implement pull-in and pull-out need to be considered in ...

This article reports the first study from the School Consultation Research Project, a cooperative group of school psychologists from four universities interested in exploring relationships among processes and outcomes in consultation. Using an interpersonal perspective, statistical relationships between 12 dyadic process variables and 4 consultation outcome variables were examined. The central hypothesis was that the more that consultant and consultee see the process in a similar way, understand their roles, and work together as a team, the more favorable are consultee perceptions of (a) the beneficialness of consultation, (b) consultee competence, (c) client improvement, and (d) consultant effectiveness. Data were collected from 61 consultant-consultee dyads situated in four locations in the northeastern, southeastern, and southwestern U.S. Results supported the hypothesis as well as the value of assuming an interpersonal perspective in future consultation research.