Rethinking the Relationship Between Consultation And Collaborative Problem-Solving

Abstract

Professionals in the field of special education have responded to the challenge of how best to meet the needs of students with mild learning and behavior problems by introducing a variety of informal service delivery options that have come to be known as prereferral interventions.These procedures are designed to provide intervention assistance quickly and informally to general educators.The intent is to enhance communication between special and general education teachers and to prevent the need for lengthy and costly student evaluations and placement in special education by remediating student difficulties in a timely, efficient manner within the general education environment.As a result, general educators should become more independent in their abilities to solve • problems and be less likely to access the special education system unnecessarily.Prereferral interventions grew out of an increasing recognition of the restrictive nature of procedures by which students become eligible to receive special education services.They represent an attempt to place a greater proportion of special education's resources into more informal, immediate service delivery approaches and a lesser proportion into diagnosis, prescription, and formal staffing procedures and meetings.Among the major forms of prereferral service delivery is consultation on the part of special education teachers (Fox et al., 1973; Fuchs & Fuchs, in press; Idol, Paolucci-Whitcomb, & Nevin, 1986).The purpose of special education consultation is to have special education teachers work directly with general educators to develop specific instructional and management interventions for students with learning and behavior problems.With programs of consultation in place, general educators receive immediate help in problem identification, intervention, and p10nitoring of student behavior.Consultation services such as these are not delivered by special education teachers alone; school psychologists also have promoted their use (Graden, Casey, & Christenson, 1985;Shapiro, 1987) and have been successful in implementing similar consultation services at the school level (Ponti, Zins, & Graden, 1988).

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