What´s Instructional Consultation?

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Consultation Final Paper
Consultation as a strategy to support positive outcomes in students, classrooms, school systems and communities is widely used and implemented throughout the education system. The purpose of this paper is to delineate some commonalities and differences between three widely used consultation models in the education system: Instructional Consultation (IC), Multicultural School Based Consultation (MSC) and Organizational Consultation (OC). This paper will 1) highlight the unique theoretical backgrounds of each consultation method, 2) discuss existing empirical support for each method 3) compare and contrast these methods of consultation and 4) present a concrete example case through the lens of each of the three models.
Theoretical Background
Instructional Consultation

Instructional Consultation is a consultee-centered, school based consultation process developed by Sylvia Rosenfield. IC addresses academic and behavioral problems of students by specifically targeting the teacher’s instruction; maximizing the academic fit or “match” between the student, task, and the instruction. The most prominent influence in IC’s theoretical background is Len Vygotsky’s notion that it is “impossible to evaluate the individual without also considering other significant people and institutions in the community” (Bjorklund, 2012, 77). This sociocultural theory emphasizes the role that adult (or more knowledgeable peer) interaction plays in a child’s development. In particular, Vygotsky posits that adult instruction is most effective when it comports with the child’s zone of proximal development (ZPD), the “potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more co...

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...r each consultation method is how to deal with resistance and consultee buy in. With IC, buy in is supposedly built into the process, because a consultee comes to the IC team for help and is involved in the assessment process. However, this simplifies buy in to a binary “I believe vs. I don’t believe” modality, when in reality buy in can be complex and involve dissonant and paradoxical beliefs (for example, desiring that the intervention to fail so a child can go to special education and get help while simultaneously hoping the IC process can help the child so they won’t need to go to special education). Also, how does IC account for systemic and multi-layered pressure and resistance from schools where IC is a new process or not well understood? What pre-existing method did IC replace at the school and how might this affect resistance and misuse of the IC process?

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