BEHAVIORAL PARENT TEACHER CONSULTATION - CONCEPTUAL AND RESEARCH CONSIDERATIONS

The importance of involving parents in their children's education has been documented consistently. Likewise, school psychology as a profession traditionally has recognized the importance of working actively and collaboratively with parents. Little conceptual or empirical work has been reported, however, that links home and school individuals systematically in collaborative problem-solving consultation. Behavioral consultation provides a useful framework for working within and between family and school systems to involve parents and teachers together in cooperative problem-solving, with a focus on the interacting systems in a child's life. The potential advantages of having both parents and teachers serve as consultees are that this structure promotes (a) identification of temporally or contextually distal setting events, (b) consistent and systematic behavioral programming, and (c) programming for generalization of treatment effects across settings. Likewise, the potential for effective communication, constructive partnerships, and productive relationships between home and school is increased. In the present article, we present an overview of conjoint behavioral consultation, as well as procedural considerations and future research directions.