An Examination of Professional Cultures: Implications for the Collaborative Consultation Model

Through collaborative consultation, school personnel belonging to varied professional cultures work together to solve classroom problems. Each professional culture adheres to particular paradigms that may become barriers if consultants and consultees are not able to view problems from mutual perspectives. Paradigms are reflected in professional discourses and can be identified by examining the content of what professionals write. The. purposes of this study were to examine the content and bibliographic citations of a random sample of articles found in Exceptional Children, Elementary School Journal, and Journal of School Psychology. The journals were chosen with the assumption that each represented the paradigms of the professional cultures of special education, general education, and school psychology, respectively. Overall, results indicate little overlap in terms of the topics addressed and sources referenced across the three journals sampled. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the process of collaborative consultation.