Date of Award

1995

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

First Advisor

Joe Witt

Abstract

Consultation is a process whereby a consultant (e.g., a psychologist) works with a direct caregiver (e.g., a teacher) to provide services to a client (e.g., a child). There has emerged a very strong supposition in the literature and in practice that consultation be a collaborative venture between co-equal professionals. Although a collaborative approach has been generally assumed beneficial, an emerging body of research is calling this into question. Further explication of the collaborative process is needed. Commonly held notions of "collaborative behavior" and "expert behavior" may be misleading, or inaccurate. This study was designed to elucidate the collaborative process. Teachers were exposed to the manipulation of two independent variables: type of teacher request and type of consultant response. Teachers viewed videotaped scenarios in which a consultee presented a consultant with one of two types of requests for help: (a) a specific request for assistance or (b) a vague request for process clarification. Teachers in videotapes received one of three types of responses from consultants: (a) specific expert advice, (b) a problem-solving process, or (c) a request for the teacher to collect baseline information. Analyses of group differences were performed yielding a main effect for type of teacher request and a main effect for type of consultant response. A significant interaction was yielded with the deletion of the attention control consultant response groups. Results were interpreted as related to the collaborative consultation literature.

Pages

61

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_disstheses.6067

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